We’ve had quite the glut of late season apples sent to us in our weekly box, more than we’ve been able to eat as snacks – so this week I’d decided to make sure and do something about it – I tried making a batch of apple candies, which, while not a total failure, definitely did not yield the hoped-for-results, but this crisp came out just about perfect, imho. We received a couple of stalks of rhubarb in this weeks FFTY box,  and since I haven’t actually tried tackling a pie crust, (yet) I opted for turning it in to a crisp with some of the afore-mentioned apples.

Although I’ve received several varieties of apples over the last few weeks, they all tend to get jumbled up in the crisper drawer, so I have no idea what varieties I ended up using, but they were definitely tasty. It took me a little while to get this recipe posted, because it has been a fairly busy week. The plan was to post this on Thursday, but I ended up making an unexpected trip to San Francisco (and I actually had time to go to ferry plaza!), and every day since then has just been jam-packed full of activities. I had a lot of fun in San Francisco – even if it did mean that I didn’t get the other stuff done that day that I had intended to do (I’ll be posting about my ferry plaza fun later). It’s not often I get a chance to spend the afternoon in the city, so I definitely had to take it.

One of these days I will tackle that whole pie-crust thing, I’ve heard that they’re tempermental – although I haven’t really tried yet, so I can’t say from experience. But in the meantime, I gotta say, a crisp is a more than adequate for my baked-fruit-sweets needs. I used Rolled Wheat in the crisp, mostly because that is what I happened to have on hand. If you don’t have them, you can easily substitute Rolled Oats. I had picked up the Rolled Wheat from one of the bulk bins at  Whole Foods a while back when I was hunting for something different to try, and overall found that they are pretty similar to Rolled Oats – although I think they take just a little bit longer to cook.

This was my first time working with rhubarb, and I gotta say – I’m now seriously a fan. They added just the right amount of tart to the apples – I didn’t need to add any lemon juice or anything to tart it up a little bit. I was surprised at how they broke down so thoroughly, though. I had figured they’d have some texture to them when cooked, but they completely mushified. They were delicious, don’t get me wrong – just not what I expected. Oh – by the way, this crisp has a very high crisp-to-fruit ratio, because thats how I like it. If you like a little less crust, you can halve the crisp part of the recipe, and you should still have plenty.

Ingredients:

Apples

• 6 Apples; cored and cut in to 1″ chunks
• 1/2 lb Rhubarb, sliced
• 4 tbs White Wine
• 1 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1 tbs Butter
• 1/8 tsp Kosher Salt

Crisp:

• 1 and 1/2 cup Flour
• 2 Sticks Butter
• 1 Cup Rolled Wheat
• 1 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1/2 Cup Shredded, Sweetened Coconut
• 1/4 tsp Kosher Salt

Method:

• Combine all ingredients for the crisp together in a bowl and mush together to combine. Set Aside.
• Grease a 9″x13″ baking pan
• Preheat Oven to 350°
• Melt the 1tbs of Butter in a large skillet over medium heat
• Add the Apples and Rhubarb, stir to combine
• Reduce heat and Cover, simmer until apples are tender – about 5-10 minutes
• Stir in the Brown Sugar, Kosher Salt and White Wine
• Spread the apple mixture in to the prepared baking pan
• Crumble the crisp mixture on top of the apple mixture
• Bake in oven for 45 minutes, or until crisp is golden brown and apple mixture is bubbly