This weeks recipe, chosen by Cristine of
Cooking with Cristine, is Apple Orchard Pecan Crumble. Thank you so much for choosing this recipe Cristine!
I knew when I saw the name of this one that it would be a winner. Apple-Pecan-Crumble. Winner-winner-winner! I am a nut for apples. If I see a recipe with apples it goes into my "have to try" pile. In fact, I had marked this recipe as a "have to" when I first got my cookbook and flipped though it. This and several others that have apples in them. And, at this time of year, what could be better? (Well, maybe something with pumpkin, my other love, but I digress!)
I had some Granny Smith apples leftover from another apple dish I did recently, so I only had to buy the other apples. McIntosh and Golden Delicious. I didn't see any Macouns around. I don't think I have ever seen those in any of the stores around here. My Golden Delicious were actually Golden Ginger apples. Never had them but hoped they would be close enough.
I think I sliced my apples a bit on the thin side. The recipe calls for 1/4" slices, but I think mine ended up being about 1/8" or even thinner. Because of that, they cooked down quite a bit. I didn't have a problem with that, but others might. You could still see that there were slices in the dish, but they were very soft.There was also a lot of juice, but not sure if that was from thin slices or just plain juicy apples. :)
Another thing I did was kick up the cinnamon. Recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon, but I love cinnamon in apples and I used close to a full teaspoon in my dish. I didn't have any ground allspice on hand either, but did have some whole allspice that I grated on a micro-grater.
I baked mine in my 2 3/4 quart Le Creuset casserole pan. It was the only dish that was close to the right size without being way too big or way too small. Sliced the apples, mixed in the spices, spread it in the Le Creuset., I then mixed up the pecan crumble, which was incredibly easy to put together. I love the fact that you melt the butter and make a dough-like topping with the flour, sugar and pecans. I spead that on top of the apples, and stuck the dish in the oven.
For the next hour and 20 minutes I had to wear a bib to keep the drool off my clothes! That's a bit of an exaggeration, but the aroma of this dish baking was maddening. For me, the sense of smell is very important in cooking. Smelling good while being prepared is the first hurdle a recipe must pass in order to be good. This one passed with flying colors!
I took it out of the oven and it was just beautiful to look at. The crust was a nice golden brown, with bits of pecans peaking out here and there. You could see the juice from the apples bubbling up around the edges of the crumble topping. I gave it about 5 minutes and then cut into it with a big spoon. I put some in a dish and added a dollop of whipped topping to it and dug in.
Oh! My! Goodness! I loved it! There was just the right tartness to the apples and the extra cinnamon I added blended with the sugar and apples perfectly. I think, for me anyway, that less cinnamon wouldn't have been as good. The crumble was crunchy, sweet, nutty all at once, It was the perfect foil to the soft, tart apples that were underneath. I loved it warm from the oven (ate it twice that night) and it was just about as good cold from the fridge the next afternoon. This is definitly a keeper in my book. I am already thinking about different fruit and nut combinations that I can try...apples, pears, peaches, berries...walnuts, pecans, peanuts, almonds...I could go on and on. Why don't you go on to
SMS and see what the other bakers thought. :)
I loved this batter and am already thinking of the different ingredients I could add to it. Of course, apples and raisins were the first ones I thought of, but the variations are endless. This is a good recipe to keep handy. I am planning on making these again tomorrow morning, to take to my son and daughter-in-law's house for breakfast.
