No time to make a pie? A crisp can be a quick and equally delicious dessert. So delicious, in fact, that "Joy of Cooking" gives its apple crisp the alternate title "Fruit Paradise."
Though apple crisps are traditional, crisps don't have to be made with apples. Any fruit can be used and combinations of fruits are even better. A combination I used this weekend was peaches, mangoes and blueberries. It was truly a fruit paradise.
While the mangoes were very much like the peaches in texture, they added their own unique flavor to the mix.
Four cups of fruit are needed. I used two cups of peaches, one cup of chopped mango and one cup of blueberries. A higher ratio of blueberries turns all the fruit blue. Of course the taste is good, but the peach and mango colors with a blueberry here or there make the dish look more appealing.
Crisps are easily made. Just wash and cut up the fruit, place it in a baking dish. Top it with a sugar/flour/butter mixture. Bake.
The topping can be made in seconds in a food processor or you can use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the dry ingredients to a crumbly state.
The fruit crisp can be served alone or topped with a few tablespoons of light cream, a dollop of whipped cream, or, my personal favorite, a scoop of ice cream.
I happened to have butter pecan ice cream, so I spooned the fruit crisp over a scoop of that. The nuts in the ice cream added a nice texture to the crisp. It made me think that a few nuts would be a good addition. Walnuts would be good, and I think I would toast them before adding them to bring out their flavor.
Often recipes call for rolled oats in the crumb topping. That can be good, too, but I prefer the tender topping made with flour and sugar. Other combinations of fruit that would make good crisps are:
Blackberries or raspberries and peaches
Blackberries, raspberries and blueberries
Apples and pineapple
Apples and cranberries
Strawberries and rhubarb
Nectarines and plums