Caramel Apple Crisp

Caramel...goooooood, Apples...goooooood, Caramel+Apples+Crisp... Awesome!



This isn't the first apple crisp in this household over the past week. The first one we made was in the oven for 10 minutes before the apartment buildings fire alarm blaringly forced us out of our apartment while I freaked out trying to figure out if it was me that set it off. All I could smell was burnt apples which didn’t make me feel any better about the situation. Luckily it wasn't, but the trouble wasn’t over yet. I followed the smell down the hallway to find that my friend across the way was trying to make her first apple pie with a recipe that I had given to her.

Fortunately crisis was averted and her pie joined my apple crisp in our oven while the fire fighters were called off. By the end of the night we each had two servings of our freshly baked apple crisp and there was nothing to show for it but an empty dish to wash and some satisfied bakers!

The second time I made this crisp I ended up standing over the dish with spoon in hand at the end of the night. I was originally just going to put it away but ended up spooning bite after bite into my mouth. I finished off a good half of the dish.

The third one was made late last Friday night. My roommate Adam was leaving for Quebec City for the weekend and wanted to bring something sweet to his family. Unfortunately he didn’t mention anything about this until 12:00am so I had my pj's on and was about to crawl into bed when the idea came up. If this was any other recipe I don't think I would have done it but I couldn’t withhold this wonderful dish from anyone, and I'm glad I lost sleep over it!



So yes, this is the fourth apple crisp this week therefore Ian and I thought that we might switch it up a little. We were contemplating cranberries or pears, but no. We intended to go all the way so we stopped in at Confection Sparkles, the local (and largest in Canada) candy store where we found every different shape and kind of caramel. Deciding to keep this batch simple, we stuck to the little square caramels. When they came out of the oven I brought down one of these little ramekins to the candy connoisseur, the owner of Confection Sparkles, and we will soon know if our little addition passes the test!

Caramel Apple Crisp
Loosely adapted from Martha Stewart
Tip: use a deep 8x8 inch pyrex dish

Topping:
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. granulated sugar
4 tbsp. unsalted butter, cold, cut into small cubes
2/3 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

Apples:
8 apples,cored,peeled, and cut into slices or enough apples to fill your pyrex dish.
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp. cornstarch
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/3 cup chopped square caramels

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In your pyrex baking dish toss apples with lemon juice, cinnamon,nutmeg,cornstartch, and sugar. In a large bowl mix together flour, caramel pieces, salt, and both sugars. Cut butter into flour until mixture is the texture of coarse meal. Add oats and squeeze mixture together to form a couple clumps. Sprinkle the topping mixture over the apples. Place baking dish on a baking sheet, and bake until golden and bubbling, 55 to 65 minutes. Let cool 15 minutes before serving.