The Crispiest Apple Crisp, Ever? Ever!

Here is the apple crisp recipe that I teased yesterday, with the outrageous claim that it’s the crispiest apple crisp topping ever. Can I prove that fact? No, and that’s the beauty of such culinary hyperbole, no one can prove otherwise.

The secret ingredient, as identified by several astute observers yesterday, is Grape Nuts. This extremely crispy and crunchy breakfast cereal does some amazing things to your basic oatmeal-based fruit crisp topping mixture. I figured anything that can soak in milk for 10 minutes and still be crunchy, would work well.

Here is a link in case you are not familiar with this product, and if you can’t get any, don’t worry, you can just double the oatmeal, or add other things like chopped nuts, etc. Will it be as good? No, not even close.

By the way, in case you’re not sure, this is a dessert. It’s not a breakfast food, it’s not a healthy snack, it’s a sweet, buttery, deliciously crispy dessert. If you want healthy, slice some apples over a bowl of oatmeal, but if you want a semi-decadent after dinner treat, I hope you give this a try. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Some of you are having issues with your own "accidental apple candy," and while I joked about it in the clip, I should have been more clear about not cooking the sugar too much before adding the apples. You can add them pretty much right after the sugar goes in the pan to avoid this issue. The risk with that is too much water from the apples diluting the caramel sauce, but that's probably the lesser of two evils.


For the topping:
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup oatmeal (rolled oats)
1/2 cup Grape Nuts
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar

For the filling:
5-6 apples
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp butter
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tbsp water
1/4 tsp cinnamon