Apple Crisp “Cobbler” Recipe (Standard and Keto, Slow Cooker and Baked)
Ingredients
Crumble Topping
1 cup all-purpose flour (for Keto: almond flour)
1 cup brown sugar (for Keto: golden granular monk fruit or other brown sugar substitute)
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup butter, cut into ¼” -ish cubes
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
Apple Coating
½ cup brown sugar (for Keto: golden granular monk fruit or other brown sugar substitute)
1 TB cornstarch
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
5 large apples (Granny Smith), cubed
2 TB lemon juice (approximately 2 lemons)
Directions:
1. In a medium bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt together. Combine butter with the flour mixture using fingers or a fork until coarse crumbs form. Stir in chopped walnuts (optional) and set aside.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together brown sugar, cornstarch, ginger, and cinnamon. Make sure there aren’t any clumps of cornstarch.
3. In a large bowl, toss the apples with lemon juice. Stir in the cornstarch mixture, coating the apples. Pour into a slow cooker.
4. Sprinkle the crumb topping on top, covering up the apples.
5. Cover and cook on High for 2 hours or Low for 4 hours, until apples are tender.
6. Partially uncover the slow cooker to allow the topping to cool and harden, about 1 hour.
Notes:
It would be hard for me to pass up a warm slice of homemade apple pie, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. But alas, my body just can’t take all of that sugar and flour anymore. Apple cobbler is a close substitute, but it’s still got quite a bit of those two ingredients. Enter: apple crisp “cobbler”! I can get my fix of apple pie without as much sugar or carbs (even less with the keto version). Enjoy!
Apples – If you don’t have Granny Smith apples, the next choice would be any green apple. The last choice is red apples because there’s already enough sweetness from the ingredients, so the tartness of green apples helps to balance that. If there aren’t any green apples, go for a less sweet red apple like Macintosh. Peeling the apples is optional. We keep our peels on.
Butter – These don’t have to be exact pieces. I simply take a stick of butter and slice it in half the long way, then turn on its side and slice the long way again, then across to get little cubes.
Nuts – I’m not a fan of walnuts, so I usually don’t use them. But when I have, people have loved this just the same. Be sure to really chop them up so that large chunks don’t overpower the flavor in any one bite.
Cooking method – If you forget about the whole two- to four-hour cooking time in a slow cooker or you think of this last minute, an alternative is to bake this in an uncovered 13×9 baking dish in the oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. The crumb coating does turn out crispier this way and the apples a little less soupy.
Crockpot – This fits our 3.5 quart crockpot. If you have a larger crockpot or if you’re using the 13×9 baking dish, you’ll have room for 7 large apples. If you increase the amount of the apples, increase the amount of the apple coating proportionally. (Ex: For two additional apples, add an additional almost-quarter cup of brown sugar, almost-TB cornstarch, ¼ tsp ginger, ¼ tsp cinnamon, almost-TB lemon juice.)
What does baking an apple cobbler have to do with time management and productivity? Simple. It’s important to create the time for yourself to enjoy life. I love to experiment with cooking and baking, so I make sure there’s time for that each weekend. What do you want to make time for?
For the complete guide to making more time to do what you love, check out The Inefficiency Assassin: Time Management Tactics for Working Smarter, Not Longer.
