18 April 2020
Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, September 2019
I'm almost always ready to try a new recipe for an apple dessert, even now when it is well past prime apple season. However, the varieties that the recipe recommends are available year round and the freshness of the apples is less an issue for cooked apples than it is for raw apples. I enjoyed a sidebar in the magazine article that provided one view of the differences between a crumble and a betty, buckle, cobbler, crisp, slump/grunt, pandowdy, and sonker.
Four pounds of apples (actually a little under with 7 golden delicious and 2 honey crisp apples) were peeled, cored, and cut into ¾-inch pieces. These were tossed with sugar, lemon juice, salt, and cinnamon and the mixture was transferred to an 8-inch baking pan. This was covered tightly with foil and cooked in a 400° oven for 35 minutes. While the apples cooked the streusel topping was prepared by mixing together flour, finely chopped almonds, sugar, and salt then stirring in melted butter, water, and vanilla. After the apples had cooked they were removed from the oven and the topping was scattered over the top. The crumble was cooked until the topping was evenly browned and the filling bubbling. It took 1 hour 25 minutes to prepare the dessert.
The recipe's goal was for a dessert focussed on the apples and it delivered on this promise. The apples are only minimally seasoned, and more importantly minimal sweetened, so their natural flavors come through. The topping is very crunchy with a nice almond flavor. It holds up well over the course of the week or so that we had this dessert. It wasn't as crunchy as when it was fresh but it still provided a good contrast with the softer apple filling. The filling was a little runny the first time we ate the crumble but it firmed up for the times we had it as a leftover. This dessert is worth making again, it is certainly much easier to make than a pie.
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