How To Make Ginger Spice Healthy Apple Crisp With Cranberries And Walnuts
Food For Life Garden
This healthy apple crisp with ginger and cranberries is pure cozy comfort for fall and the cold season. Tart and sweet, with warming spices and a nutty, crunchy oatmeal-einkorn-walnut topping.
Prep Time 20 minutes mins
Cook Time 45 minutes mins
Total Time 1 hour hr 5 minutes mins
Course Baked Goods, Dessert, Party, Potluck, Snack
Baking dish - I used an 8 x 10 inch baking dish today, But I often use a 7 x 11 inch instead. You can also use an 8 inch square or 9 or 10 inch cast iron frying pan.
Bowl
Paring knife
Apple peeler - optional if you want to peel your apples.
Filling Ingredients
- 8 apples - approximately 2 lbs sliced
- ¾ cup dried cranberries
- ½ cup crystallized ginger pieces - or 1/4 cup diced young ginger or 2 tablespoons grated ginger
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
Topping Ingredients
- 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
- ½ cup fresh milled einkorn flour
- ¼ cup panela sugar or coconut sugar - add a couple of extra tablespoons if you like it really sweet or if you're using unsweetened dried or fresh cranberries and ginger.
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp nutmeg
- ½ tsp cardamom
- 1 tsp ginger paste or fresh grated ginger or ½ tsp dried ginger powder
- 6 tbsp Butter melted
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ cup walnuts crushed or chopped
Prepare the Filling
If your apple peels look a bit sorry or are sprayed, peel your apples. Otherwise you can choose to leave them on for better nutrition.
Quarter, core and slice the apples. If you have one of those nifty apple-peeler-slicer-corer gadgets, you can use it for a quick and easy time with those apples. My apples were very small and kind of irregular with lots to cut out, so I just used a regular peeler and hand cored and sliced. It takes not that much longer.
Toss your apple slices with the lemon juice to keep them from browning.
Mix in the cranberries and crystallized ginger pieces.
Place the filling into the bottom of your baking dish.
Prepare the Topping
I use the same bowl that had the apples in it to mix my crumbles.
Add the dry ingredients, flour, oats, walnuts, panela sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom and ginger to the bowl and mix it with a fork.
Add the melted butter and mix it in with a fork or your hands.
Crumble the topping over the top of the apple filling.
Place your pan in the oven and bake the apple crisp at 375℉ for about 45 minutes or until the apples are soft. If the crumble starts turning dark before the apples are soft, just cover with a bit of aluminum foil.
Serve while still hot or warm with a great big scoop of ice cream.
If you're serving it as a holiday dessert, it looks really nice when you drizzle with some caramel sauce. I used homemade goat caramel (cajeta).
Tips, Variations, And Substitutions
Nuts: If you need to consider nut allergies in your family, you can leave the nuts out. Or replace it with a nut that will not cause problems. Pecans, hazelnuts, or cashews would work great too.
Ice cream: Conventional ice cream is a horrible food, and comes most often from GMO, hormone, and antibiotic fed dairy animals. Then it has a lot of weird things added to it to make it creamy, stabilized, fluffy and what have you, besides being enhanced with artificial this and that for flavor and sweetened with corn syrup. I had to give up ice cream once I became aware of this, but there are some good brands out there if you can find them. They are not normally found in grocery stores or walmart, but check your health food store. Strauss and Alden make good, clean, organic ice cream. You can also make your own. Here is a great healthy vanilla ice cream from scratch at a friend's blog.
Flour: Instead of einkorn, use any grain you like. I prefer einkorn in much of my baking. It's the original ancient wheat that was already mentioned early in the bible. It is so much easier to utilize by our bodies, because it's genetic makeup works with our digestive system. Then humans decided to 'improve' for greater yields and ease of harvesting, and, over time, turned it into the hard to digest wheat that graces the grocery isle rows today. It's very efficient for industrialized farming, but certainly not so great for our health.
Cranberries: I used dried cranberries only because fresh ones aren't available yet and my local stores don't carry frozen ones. But I would prefer using fresh ones, so if you can get them, go ahead and use them. Increase the amount to 1 ½ cups or more if you like. When using fresh, unsweetened cranberries you can also add another tablespoon or two of sugar to the topping.
Ginger: In place of the crystallized ginger, you can chop some fresh, young ginger and use it instead. Or grate it if it's not the freshest anymore.
To make your own crystallized ginger, simmer some ginger slices or chopped ginger in 2 cups of water for 20 minutes, add 2 cups of evaporated cane juice sugar and keep simmering it for another 20 - 30 minutes without a lid, until the ginger is soft and the sugar water has thickened a little. Drain on racks. I love the crystallized ginger.
Enjoy Your Awesome, Gingery And Healthy Apple Crisp With Cranberries And Walnuts
I hope you'll give this apple crisp a go in your kitchen. It's quick and easy and tastes fantastic. If you use healthy ingredients, you can actually call it healthy too. And it will help support your health while satisfying your sweet tooth and your dessert cravings. I love to eat wholesome food that is nourishing and tastes good too. Enjoy your delicious apple crisp! 