Individual Brown Butter Apple Crisps – Recipe!

Apple crisp is one popular dessert, especially during the fall when apple season is at its peak.  That crunchy sugar-crust on top of oven baked sliced apples, flecked with cinnamon, seems to always stand out in everyone’s mind.  However, creating a crust with brown butter, instead of diced cold butter, creates a new dimension that adds a slight nuttiness that’s irresistible.

To create brown butter, you melt it in a skillet until the milk solids turn a light golden brown, but not too dark.  It’s a pretty easy task, but there is a fine line between browned butter and burnt butter, so watch it carefully as it bubbles away in the pan.

After the butter is cooled, scrape this golden liquid into the crust topping with a fork, using a raking sort of motion.  This creates little clumps of crust that pile up faster than wet sand for a sandcastle at the beach.  After being baked, the crisps are crusty golden brown on top with a softened apple center.  I love them with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream served on top.

Ingredients

6 firm apples – Gala, Granny Smith or Honeycrisp

1/2 cup granulated sugar

juice of 1 lemon

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Crust

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch of salt

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

(Serves 6)

To Prepare:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter six – 1 cup ramekins, set aside.
2. Peel and slice apples and place in a large bowl.  Add sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon, toss to coat.  Spoon apples into ramekins.
3. In a large bowl, add flour, oats, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt, stir.
4. Place butter in a skillet over medium heat.  After butter has melted, watch while it bubbles and turns a golden brown, remove from heat immediately, let cool.
5. Pour butter into crust ingredients, while scraping mixture with a fork to create coarse crumbs.  Pile crumbs on top of apples.  Set ramekins on sheet pan.
6. Bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown on top.  Remove and let cool, serve with ice cream, if desired.  Enjoy!