Crisp

This recipe is infinitely adaptable—swap in whichever summer fruit you prefer, add coconut flakes or sunflower seeds to the topping, and amp up the filling with fresh ginger or herbs.

This recipe is part of the Epicurious Online Cooking School, in partnership with the Culinary Institute of America. To watch it being made, and to learn how to make other dessert classics, check out the videos.

Effort Level: I This is a pretty common and easy trip dessert. You can use fresh or dried apples. Often people add rolled oats or granola to the topping, but in my opinion that can taste too much like breakfast. Without the oats and with lots of sugar it's a gooey and crunchy dessert.
-Mark Scriver

Keep this topping in the freezer, in a resealable plastic bag, for up to 2 months; it can be used to make fruit crisps whenever you need a quick dessert. This recipe makes enough for 2 large crisps.

This recipe makes 3 peach and 3 cherry crisps. The ice cream is made by mixing cinnamon into store-bought vanilla ice cream and refreezing it. We call for fresh cherries, but frozen ones will work just as well; you’ll need to adjust amounts in step 3: Reduce the brown sugar to 1/3 cup and increase the cornstarch to 2 tablespoons.

This easy dessert can also be made in eight six-ounce ramekins—simply divide the filling and topping evenly among the dishes. The baking time will be the same.

This one’s from my co-author. Growin’ up in southeastern Pennsylvania around lots of fruit trees, she makes a mean crisp.

Florida chef Oliver Saucy, who attended the 1995 Workshop, tosses the peaches in his fruit crisp with crystallized ginger—a nice touch. Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream. Tapioca flour thickens the peach juices without making them cloudy or imparting a floury taste. If you can’t find it, purchase pearl tapioca and grind it fine in a spice mill or coffee grinder.

WHY IT’S LIGHT Fruit makes a naturally healthy dessert; here, lightly sweetened fresh pears and berries are embellished with only a thin layer of crunchy oatmeal topping. The topping can be made ahead and chilled until ready to use; refrigerate it in an airtight container up to five days.

Crisps and cobblers are humble desserts, not too sweet, and full of flavor. A deep layer of fruit is baked under a crunchy topping or cream biscuits, much like a deep-dish pie with a top crust. Every season has fruit to offer: apples and pears in fall and winter, rhubarb and strawberries in the spring, and all the stone fruits and berries of summer. A crisp topping is a coarse mixture of flour, brown sugar, nuts, and spices, with butter worked into the flour mixture just until it’s crumbly. Crisp topping is as easy to make in large batches as it is in small batches, and it freezes very well for up to 2 months. It is a convenient staple to have in the freezer for a quick dessert for an unexpected occasion. Topped with biscuits, cobblers are less sweet than crisps and best made with juicy fruits. I make simple cream biscuits out of flour and butter worked together, leavened with a little baking powder, and moistened with heavy cream. The dough is rolled out on the thick side and cut into shapes. Once cut, the biscuits can be held in the refrigerator for an hour or two before baking. Crisps and cobblers work best when the fruit is piled high. For both desserts the fruit is cut into bite-size pieces (1/3-inch-thick slices or 1-inch cubes) and, like fruit pie fillings, tossed with a little flour and a little sugar. Use less sugar for crisp fillings because the crisp topping is so sweet. Tart rhubarb needs quite a bit of sugar, apples need less, and sweet fruits such as peaches need almost none at all. Taste the fruit while you are cutting it and again after it is sugared; you can always add more. The flour thickens the juices that would otherwise be too soupy. It doesn’t take much, a tablespoon or two at the most. A crisp or cobbler is served straight from the dish it has been baked in, so choose an attractive one. Ceramic dishes are best, as metal pans will react with the acid of the fruit. The dish needs to be about 3 inches deep to accommodate a generous layer of fruit. Place the dish on a baking sheet to catch any overflowing juices. Cook until the crisp is dark golden brown and the fruit is bubbling up on the sides; a cobbler’s biscuits should be cooked through and golden. If the crisp topping is browning before the fruit is done, place a piece of foil over the top to protect it. Lift off the foil for the last few minutes to recrisp the topping. Serve right away or put back in the oven to warm for a few minutes before serving. Cobblers and crisps are delicious on their own but are even better served with a little cold heavy cream or whipped cream.

In place of apples, you can use pears here or a mixture. In fact, this is a universal crisp recipe and will work with just about any fruit. Almost needless to say, it’s great with vanilla ice cream.

A parfait is a great party dessert—elegant-looking but essentially quite simple. This one is really fun to put together, and I have the kids help me: they love to crack and crumble up into hundreds of pieces the big brown sugar crisp I’ve baked, then layer them in the parfait glasses (and pop lots of crumbles into their mouths too, I’ve noticed). Like the crisp, the poached apple cubes are delicious all by themselves. You want to use flavorful, tart-tasting apples that will keep their shape when cooked but soften up nicely and remain moist too. Good varieties are Greening, Granny Smith, Northern Spy, and Golden Delicious. Some of the heirloom cooking apples that orchards are growing again would be fine too—we can never have too many varieties of apples to enjoy.

Rhubarb is a vegetable, although it is typically used in jams and desserts; its tart flavor makes it the perfect companion for fresh strawberries, or in this case, strawberry ice cream.