Apple Crisp

We had some young missionaries from our church over for dinner last night. We love to feed these guys, they always appreciate good food. Especially great, home cooked desserts! Ice cream on the side never hurts either... :-)

My husband, Mark, found some grapes that were rotting leaking in the front of our fruit drawer. He took them out, along with the apples in the back of the drawer and placed the apples on the counter. The grapes of course went in the trash. But what do I do with the apples? They were perfectly fine, but I needed some sort of dessert to go with dinner. We were just having some baked chicken and mashed potatoes, so simple was the way to go.

Aha! How about a nice apple crisp!

All these amounts are approximate, since I forgot to measure and write down. I just kind of threw stuff in!

3 apples, peeled and cored - Granny Smith are great!
a small squirt of lemon juice
about 1/2 cup sugar
maybe 1/3 cup flour
2 tsp -ish cinnamon
kind of 1 tsp nutmeg
the same of ground cloves
another 1/2 cup of flour, I think
1/2 ? cup oatmeal
big handful of pecans, chopped fine
1/4 cup butter

I cut the apples in half, from top to bottom. Then I turned them on their flat cut side and sliced them about 1/4 inch. In a bowl they went, with a little lemon juice squirted in and tossed around.

In a different bowl I mixed the sugar, flour, spices. I sprinkled it over the apples and tossed them well.

Next I stirred the flour, oatmeal and pecans together. I cut the butter into smaller pieces and dropped them in. I kind of cut it in with a fork, mashed it around. I don't think I put any more spices in with this stuff, but I know it got sprinkled over the top of the apples. I also dropped a few slices of butter on top, because some of it looked a little dry-ish.

The chicken was not as thawed as it should have been, so it was cooking at 450. When it got done I turned the oven down to 400 and stuck the crisp in. I wanted it done a little before we got done eating so it wouldn't be too hot, just warm enough to soften the ice cream. About 20 minutes later I pulled it out, the apples were cooked through and the topping looked golden and nicely crisp.

We all really enjoyed it! The crisp went well with the ice cream. There really wasn't much left. I think what made it different was the cloves, I don't recall ever putting cloves in a cobbler or crisp before. It added a slightly different flavor, and tasted really good. There may be a small scoop left today, unless Mark finished it off while I helped a friend take care of some stuff. I haven't looked yet, because if there is any left I may not be able to leave it for Mark's lunch today!