Monday, April 20, 2009

Recipe: Primal Apple Crisp


I have had a severe lack of dessert since the start of my primal living experiment, which ended up lasting much longer than a week. I hopefully have broken through the wall of grumpiness and depression which may have been cause by sugar withdrawals, but that doesn't mean I have forsaken an after dinner treat completely. I've been eating a lot of fruit when I want a treat, but sometimes that just doesn't cut it.

I have been wanting to make apple crisp for a while. I think I did find a straight forward primal recipe for one at some point, but yesterday when I went to make it, I couldn't fine one recipe that didn't have something verboten in it. I basically dissected and picked apart several recipes from around the web, and used things I  had on hand already, creating something all my own.

Nina's Primal Apple Crisp

Topping:
1 Cup Nuts (A lot of recipes call for all almonds, I used Almonds, Pecans, and some Macadamia)
3 Tablespoons Arrowroot
1/4 teaspoon Salt (I omitted this because some of my nuts were salted)
4 Tablespoons Cold Butter (sub coconut oil to Veganize!)
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1/4 Cup Agave Nectar*

Fruit:
5-6 Apples (I used Granny Smiths, McIntoshs, and Galas)
Juice and Zest of 1 Lime & 1/2 Orange (most recipes called for lemon but I used what I had)
1 Tablespoon Arrowroot
2 Tablespoons Agave
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon Fresh Nutmeg


*I use agave nectar in any recipe that calls for cooked honey. Cooked honey is considered poisonous in Ayurveda. Which my father has adamantly reminded me of my whole life. I'd rather not temp fate.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix dry ingredients of topping mixture in work bowl of food processor, pulse till nuts are small chunks. Add agave, butter in small pieces, and vanilla. Pulse until incorporated, butter may still be chunky.

Peel and chop apples in a separate bowl. Add juice, zest, arrowroot, agave, cinnamon, and nutmeg, mix.

In a sprayed or buttered baking dish, add apples, then top with blobs of topping mixture.

Bake for 45 minutes, til golden brown and bubbly.

This was good. Very very good. It's not as sweet as traditional apple crisp, but I thought you really got a feeling for a true sweetness of the apples without missing out on the sweet sweet goo that you have come to expect with a good apple crisp. The nuts got all toasty (be careful not to burn them) and made for almost a cookie tasting topping. We just wanted to eat only this for dinner when it came out of the oven. I will make this again.. and again.. and again.

10 comments:

Deb Schiff said...

Looks like a fantastic apple crisp!

NiNa* said...

Thank you Deb! :)

Anonymous said...

This looks yummy--even if I don't stick with paleo, I may have to try this!

NiNa* said...

Paleo is hard for me too. It's only things like this getting me by. Hahah.

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Unknown said...

Thank you for posting this recipe. I love your site! I just made this tonight, and it turned out great. I shared with several neighbors, and all of them loved it. I did omit the "broil" step, so the crisp could have been crispier, but it was still very easy and very good.

NiNa* said...

Thank you Ces! I'm glad you and your neighbors enjoyed it!

Oblio said...

I recently made this recipe and served it to my friend from Austria - where Apple Strudel is KING! I told him that this was "strudel-less strudel". And he LOVED it... and so did I. I am making it again tonight. Thanks so much for an awesome recipe!! If it passes the Austrian taste-test, it will probably please everyone!

Sojka's Call said...

I was going to try this with peaches and wondered two things: 1) what was the volume of fruit (in cups)you used, and 2) what size baking dish did you use?

NiNa* said...

Sorry I missed your comment til now. I probably used about 2 cups of fruit and I used a 10" baking dish. I think whatever you have on hand would work.