An apple crisp recipe is the kind of easy weeknight bake that stars fruit for dessert. Raid your pantry and make this tonight.
Fruits Keep with the Seasons
This recipe works best with drier, firmer fruit, such as apples, pears, and plums. So, this apple crisp recipe is quite flexible with the seasons and you can easily swap in fruit that’s available. Stone fruits in the summer can also include nectarines and peaches (especially great with ginger). In the autumn, pears can swap in in a pinch. In late summer or whenever apples are on-hand, we like Pink Lady, Granny Smith, or Fuji here. Use what you have.
Apples + Figs
There’s something about matching up apples with figs, especially if you use the varieties mentioned above. The slight tanginess of the apples draw out the sweetness of the figs. They’re complementary fruits, featured in other recipes on our site like Apple Turnovers for breakfast, or for dessert, including apples baked with cider and stuffed with figs, red wine baked apple halves with figs, or brown butter baked apple slices with figs. We even have a sweet savory condiment perfect for serving alongside pork or chicken in fig and apple relish with almonds and cumin.
Fig Types that Best Pair with Apples
Both our Orchard Choice and Sun-Maid Golden and Mission Dried Figs pair well with apples. Each dried fig variety lends something different. For the apple crisp recipe below, use what you have, but we tend to think that the golden dried figs really sparkle with the ginger. Dried Mission Figs will offer a deeper sweetness. We tend to think of them as being the red wine equivalent to golden dried figs / white wine equivalent.
Go Nuts
Feel free to substitute other nuts, such as pecans or walnuts, for the almonds. Or, if you’re avoiding nuts for dietary reasons or from food allergies, you could try substituting in slightly toasted pepitas, also called pumpkin seeds for a bit of crunch in the apple crisp recipe.
A La Mode or Not
A scoop of vanilla ice cream or dollop of whipped cream on top makes the apple crisp extra special, but isn’t altogether necessary. You could just as easily scoop on some yogurt—plain yogurt (or even creme fraiche) offers a tangy note to pair with the baked fruit or for something sweeter, try vanilla yogurt.
California Fig and Apple Crisp with Ginger
Ingredients
Filling
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp cornstarch
- 1 1/2 lbs apples peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2" chunks
- 1 1/2 cups Orchard Choice or Sun-Maid California Figs stemmed and quartered
- 2 tsp fresh lemon juice
- 1 tsp grated fresh ginger
Topping
- 1/2 cup walnuts toasted and chopped
- 1/2 cup old fashioned oats
- 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup light brown sugar packed
- 2 tbsp granulated sugar
- 3/4 tsp ground ginger
- 1/8 tsp table salt
- 6 tbsp unsalted butter melted
Instructions
For the Filling
- Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 400 degrees. Whisk the sugar and cornstarch together in a large bowl. Add the apples chunks, figs, lemon juice, and ginger and toss gently to combine. Transfer the fruit filling to an 8-inch baking dish, cover with foil, and set on a foil lined rimmed baking sheet (for easy cleanup). Bake the fruit until it is hot and has releases its juices, 20 to 25 minutes.
For the Topping
- Meanwhile, pulse the walnuts, oats, flour, sugars, ginger and salt together in a food processor until the nuts are finely chopped, about 9 pulses. Drizzle the melted butter over the top and pulse until the mixture resembles crumbly, wet sand, about 5 pulses. Transfer the mixture to a medium bowl and pinch between your fingers into small pea-sized pieces (with some smaller loose bits).
- Remove the fruit from the oven, uncover, and stir gently. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the fruit. Bake the crisp until the topping is deep golden brown and the fruit is bubbling, about 15 minutes, rotating the dish halfway through baking. Let the crisp cool for 10 minutes before serving.