Fruit Crisp

This week when I got my produce order from my local farm store, I asked what they had for salads that was different and interesting. Ryan suggested ground cherries. I’ve heard of ground cherries but have never eaten them. Being an adventurous person, I decided to try them. When I got them, I tried one. Yes! These would be good in a salad, however I waffled on what I wanted to do with them. I’m not sure what turned the tables, but I settled on a fruit crisp.

The ground cherry had both a sweet and tart taste. I’m not a fan of overly sweet desserts so I thought these might work. The first thing I needed to do was to husk the ground cherries and see how much I was left with. Ground cherries have a husk that is similar to a tomatillo, but there is no stickiness. They are much easier to husk, but they are also much smaller. After I husked about a quarter of them, I brought in a daughter to help me. She saved my hands from becoming tired. Together, we also came up with a technique of pinching the stem end while husking them that made things much faster and easier.

My pint of unhusked ground cherries came to about ⅔ of a pint once they were husked. I needed 5-6 cups of fruit for a crisp. After checking with my husband, I found he had picked a light half pint of raspberries from our bushes this past week. I was excited that I might be able to make a fruit crisp but I still needed 2-3 more cups of fruit. There were cooking apples in the fridge which would work but seemed like a tart combination with the ground cherries. Still feeling a bit crazy and exotic because of the ground cherries, I tried to think what else I could add.

I had canned peaches, which have worked well for this recipe before, but I really wanted to do something different. Finally, I remembered the big bag of frozen strawberries in the downstairs freezer. I’ve never heard of strawberries in crisp before. I’m sure it’s probably a thing, but I just don’t usually want to cook strawberries during strawberry season. So why not?

Some Combinations of Fruit That Will Work in a Crisp Just suggestions. Adjust amounts to your liking

Apples and Berries, roughly 3:1

Berries and Ground Cherries, roughly 3:1

Apples and Strawberries roughly 1:1

Peaches and Berries roughly 2:1

Mixed Berry any combination

All Apple

All Peach

All Blackberry

All Blueberry

I found out I should have been putting strawberries into crisps long before this. I think the ground cherries were great in this crisp because of their tartness, but I probably wouldn’t pair them with another tart fruit like a baking apple. This may not be a popular opinion, but I prefer fruit crisp over pie. Whether a person favors pie or crisp, fruit crisp is definitely a lot easier to make than a pie. This one was delicious!

Print Recipe

Fruit crisp

A traditional crisp topping baked over the fruit of your choice

Prep Time20 minutes mins

Cook Time35 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Fruit Crisp

Servings: 5

Ingredients

• 5-6 cups Fruit sliced peeled and cored apples, sliced peeled peaches, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, ground cherries, blueberries etc., or a mixture of fruit)
• 2/3 cup packed Brown Sugar
• 1/2 cup all-purpose Flour
• 1/2 cup Oats
• 1/2 teaspoon ground Cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground Nutmeg
• 1/2 cup softened Butter
• Baking Spray
• *** If making a blueberry crisp, toss the blueberries in a Tablespoon of Lemon Juice in the baking dish before putting the crisp topping on

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 375° 
• Place fruit in an even layer in a 8×8 baking pan or dish (I prefer Pyrex for this).
  
• In a medium bowl, mix together the brown sugar, flour, oats, cinnamon and nutmeg.
  
• Cut softened butter into mixture with a fork until butter is somewhere between pea and hazelnut sized pieces.
  
• Sprinkle mixture evenly over fruit.
  
• Bake for 30-35 minutes until topping is golden brown.
  

Modifications

Husking ground cherries was a little hard on my hands. If things like peeling and slicing fruit is difficult, use fruits that don’t need preparation. Drained, canned peaches in fruit juice, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries all just need to be measured out. I’ve made a canned peach with a half pint of raspberry crisp before and it is delicious.

Cutting the butter into the topping with a fork was a little slow and difficult and at the end I just used my fingers to break up the final lumps that were too big. Use a fork for most of it. Warm fingers with warm butter was a little messy.