With tender sweet-tart apples and a crunchy spiced topping, this paleo apple crisp makes a cozy fall (or anytime!) dessert.
Prep Time: 20 minutesminutes
Cook Time: 1 hourhour10 minutesminutes
Total: 1 hourhour30 minutesminutes
Servings: 6servings
Ingredients
Apples:
2poundssweet-tart apples (such as fuji, honeycrisp, or pink lady; about 7 medium)
¼cupapple cider or juice
1tablespoonmaple syrup (more if your apples are very tart)
1 ½tablespoonslemon juice
⅛teaspoonfine sea or kosher salt
3tablespoonsunsalted butter, vegan butter, or coconut oil, diced
Crumble Topping:
¾cup(80 g) blanched almond flour*
¼cup(35 g) cassava flour*
1 ½tablespoons(11 g) tapioca flour
½cup(50 g) toasted pecans or walnuts, coarsely chopped*
⅓cup(45 g) coconut sugar or maple sugar
½teaspoonground cinnamon
¼teaspoonfreshly grated nutmeg
¼teaspoonfine sea or kosher salt
5tablespoons(70 g) unsalted butter, vegan butter, or coconut oil, melted
Non-dairy vanilla ice cream, for serving
Instructions
Apples:
Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 350ºF.
Peel the apples using a T-shaped vegetable peeler. Cut the apple flesh off the core by standing a peeled apple upright and cutting downward next to the core to remove large chunks of apples. Place the chunks cut side-down and slice them fairly thin – about three-eighths of an inch.
Toss the apples in a large bowl with the apple cider, maple syrup, lemon juice, and salt.
Scrape the apples into a 9-inch round baking dish with 2-inch high sides (or an 8x8-inch square pan).
Dot the apples with the cubed butter.
Bake the apples at 350 until bubbling, 30-35 minutes. Stir gently.
Topping:
While the apples bake, prepare the topping. Place the almond, cassava, and tapioca flours in a large bowl with the nuts, coconut sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Stir to combine.
Stir in the melted butter until combined; the mixture will resemble gravel.
Crumble the topping over the baked apples.
Return to the oven and bake until the topping is deep golden and the apples are bubbling. This takes 40-50 minutes in my oven, but other readers have reported that it only takes 15-30 minutes, so keep a close eye on it!
Let cool slightly, at least 10 minutes. The topping will become more crisp as it cools and the juices will soak back into the apples.
Serve warm or at room temperature with ice cream.
Video
Notes
*Ingredient subs:
In place of almond flour, sub by weight: almond meal, hazelnut flour, or tiger nut flour (for nut-free)
In place of cassava flour, sub by weight: more almond flour, paleo AP flour, gluten-free AP flour, sweet rice flour
In place of tapioca flour, sub by weight: corn starch or arrowroot flour
This crisp is best within a few hours of baking, but leftovers keep well covered and refrigerated for up to 3 days, or frozen for up to 2 months. I love eating cold leftovers for breakfast with a scoop of plain yogurt. Or you can reheat them in a 350º oven or toaster oven until warm, about 10 minutes, or longer if frozen.To feed a crowd, double the recipe and prepare it in a 9x13-inch baking dish, increasing the bake times as needed.Brown Butter Apple Crisp: Brown the butter (with half a vanilla bean, if you like). Stir 3 tablespoons melted browned butter into the apples and use the rest in the topping.Boozy Apple Crisp: Use hard apple cider, GF bourbon, brandy, or Calvados instead of some or all of the apple cider.Pumpkin Spice Apple Crisp: Use 1 teaspoon golden pumpkin spice mix in place of the cinnamon and nutmeg.Masala Chai-Spiced Apple Crisp: Stir together ½ teaspoon each ground ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom. Use ½ teaspoon of this mixture in the apples and the rest in the topping.Paleo Peach Crisp: Omit the apples and apple juice and make the filling with 2 pounds of unpeeled peaches, cut into wedges, plus 1 tablespoon tapioca flour to thicken the juices.