Name: Gram's Apple Crisp
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 1 h 5 min
Total time: 1 h 35 min
Yield: 15
Ingredients: 10 Medium Granny Smith Apples (approx 4 lbs); 3/8 Cup Orange Juice; 2.5 Cups Sugar; 1 ¾ cups all purpose flour; 1.5 tsp cinnamon; ¼ tsp salt; 1.5 cups of butter & wrappers for buttering pan

One of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions is Pie Night.

My mom and I, along with other women from the family, gather at my aunt’s house to make all the pies Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving day.

For as long as I can remember, my job has been the apple crisp. For years, I made it with Gram, starting with a recipe from her vintage Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, but adapting it to our tastes and for a bigger crowd.

Now, the love of the recipe has spread to my husband’s family and we get requests for it when we gather with his mom or dad too. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do!

How to Get Apple Crisp Crispy On Top

When you’re following the recipe below, don’t miss the temperature change at the end of your baking time. It helps crisp the top!

Gram's Apple Crisp

Yield: 15

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour 5 minutes

Additional Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

Ingredients

10 Medium Granny Smith Apples (approx 4 lbs)
3/8 Cup Orange Juice
2.5 Cups Sugar
1 ¾ cups all purpose flour
1.5 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
1.5 cups of butter & wrappers for buttering pan

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Using the butter wrappers, butter the bottom and sides of a 9 x 13 baking dish.

Peel apples & cut into small rectangles. They don’t have to be perfect but should be approximately the same size so they cook evenly.

Put all apples into the buttered baking dish and sprinkle them with the orange juice.

Combine the sugar, flour, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl.

Cut in the butter with a fork and knife or pastry cutter until the mixture is crumbly.

Your butter should NOT be melted, but mixed into small chunks like bread crumbs. Layer the mixture evenly over the apples to form your crisp crust.

Bake at 375 for 1 hour on the middle rack of your oven.

Then, increase temp to 425 and bake for an additional 5 minutes.

Exact cooking time for the top to brown may vary slightly, so I recommend keeping an eye on it toward the end of the cooking time.

Cool before serving. It will deflate and the top will crisp up a bit more in the first 10 minutes out of the oven.

Do not put a lid or foil over the top until the apple crisp is cool.

Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce.

Notes

TIP: Peel & cut 5 of the apples and then put them in your buttered pan, then sprinkle with ½ of the orange juice to keep them from browning while you peel and cut the rest.

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Before I wrote the post, I did some research about apple dessert names, because the original cookbook called their version Apple Betty. There’s also Apple Crumbles, which seems appropriate.

Apple crisps often have oats in the topping, but other than that, our version is closest to a crisp. Based on that, I stuck with what we’ve always called it.

Enjoy and don’t forget to pin it to your dessert board so you can find it later!

Gram’s Apple Crisp

How to Get Apple Crisp Crispy On Top