Healthy Recipe For Blueberry Apple Crisp Confuses Kids And Pleases Guests

For dessert the other night I prepared Jody Littler's recipe for Blueberry Apple Crisp. It's one of the several apple crisp recipes in her book Apples Everything, co-authored with Jean Hill. I chose this particular apple crisp recipe because of its healthy ingredients. I had whole oats, walnuts, and apples on hand because recently the kids and I have not been eating particularly healthy food. So the apples in the crisper had started giving me those looks, "It's now or never, baby." The walnuts were left-over from Christmas. And the expiration date on the carton of oats had faded into mystery. Time to get back on track, eat healthy, and clean out the cupboard.

Jody had written, "The blueberries and apples really complement each other! A favorite of ours!" I've liked Jody's other recipes, so if she raved about this one I felt confident our dinner guests would enjoy it too. Click on "continue reading..." for the recipe and more of the story.

Blueberry Apple Crisp

• 4 cups Cortland apples, cored and peeled ( I chopped mine too, and used whatever those apples in the 'fridge were. I only know they weren't Red Delicious, because to me Delicious never are.)
• 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice (I used fresh lemon juice and about a Tablespoon because you know how squeezing a lemon goes - everywhere but into the spoon. I also really like lemon.)

Topping:

• 1 1/3 cup quick-cooking oats, uncooked
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (I ground the walnuts in a food processor and this worked really well because the kids had no clue they were eating walnuts. The walnut flavor got well-mixed among the oats and tasted terrific.)
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup melted butter or margarine

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Put apples and blueberries in 8 x 8-inch square baking pan. Sprinkle with sugar and lemon juice. Stir together topping ingredients just until dry ingredients are moistened and crumbly; sprinkle over fruit. Bake uncovered for 1 hour.

I assembled the crisp but let it sit in the fridge a few hours because we had to leave the house. I baked it later for just a few minutes longer than directed and it came out just fine.

I also messed around with the sugar proportions. I understand that most people like sweet desserts, but I'm a bit odd in this respect. I enjoy tart fruits. So when it came to dousing the apples in white sugar, I hesitated. I knew the kids would want me to put the 3/4 cup on as Jody Little had specified. But I also saw that the topping called for 1/3 cup packed brown sugar. For me, that's more sugar than I enjoy. I considered our guests. They're not into super-sweet foods so I decided to sprinkle only about 1/4 cup of white sugar on the apples. Then I increased the amount of brown sugar in the topping to 1/2 cup. I prefer the taste of brown sugar to white. The blueberry apple crisp had just the right sweetness for me and our guests. The kids gobbled theirs up and asked for more, so they clearly liked it too.

Now here's why I think that this recipe for blueberry apple crisp can confuse kids. It's a dessert recipe, - my skeptical 9-year-old can read that it's listed in the dessert section of the cookbook. But it's healthy enough to serve at breakfast, at least in my house. As I mentioned before, we haven't been eating particularly healthfully. The kids have adopted Special-K breakfast bars as their breakfast of choice. The nuts on the package and the brand name dupe me into considering these a healthy breakfast choice. But I know the truth. I'll be honest, I buy the bars because the kids request them, can grab them themselves, and will happily eat them.

But the morning after our party we had left-over blueberry apple crisp. I think this crisp is healthier than those breakfast bars and the kids like it better. So when I asked the kids if they wanted blueberry apple crisp for breakfast they looked at me as if I'd fallen off my health-kick rocker. Pleased by their mom's newly-found insanity, they quickly said yes before I could regain my senses. They happily ate up the apple crisp for breakfast. I'm not going to tell them how healthy this dessert recipe is. I'll keep making this crisp for breakfast and let them keep thinking they're being decadently naughty. We'll all be so pleased by our deviousness.

Comments

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I think my kids will love this one, even it looks terrible but I think this will taste really good!