Easy Old Fashioned Apple Cobbler Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What's the difference between apple crisp and apple cobbler recipe? ›

Cobbler: A fruit dessert made with a top crust of pie dough or biscuit dough but no bottom crust. Crisp/crumble: In Alberta, the terms are mostly interchangeable. Both refer to fruit desserts similar to cobbler but made with a brown sugar streusel topping sometimes containing old-fashioned rolled oats.

Cobbler is sometimes described as a kind of fruit pie, but strictly speaking, the two are different. Pies are made from pastry, rather than biscuit batter, and they are fully encased, with a crust at the top and the bottom, while cobblers typically only have a topping.

The biggest difference is that a cobbler is so easy to make (easier than pie!). While a pie is made with a bottom crust and often a top crust, the dough and the fruit filling cook together in a cobbler. Peach cobbler is best served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, but it's also delicious cold.

The best way to prevent a watery apple crisp is to use a thickener in the filling – some recipes use flour, but I've chosen to use cornstarch in this recipe (or arrowroot starch, which can be substituted 1:1 for cornstarch) because I think it provides superior thickening power.

Our test kitchen says baking apples, like Rome or Cortland, are the best varieties to use for apple crisp, but Empire, Gala, or Braeburn apples are also good in this recipe. Experiment with different types of apples and see which you prefer.

Both are very similar apple desserts, but the difference mainly comes down to the crumble topping: Instead of the flour and oat mixture used in an apple crisp, an apple brown betty uses breadcrumbs for its crumbly, delicious topping.

In a cobbler, the topping is a dough with a rising agent like baking powder that bakes up into a slightly sweet, biscuit-like topping. In crisp, the topping is made with flour, sugar, butter, oats and sometimes nuts without a leavening agent. The topping is sprinkled over the fruit before baking.

Cobblers are made with biscuit dough. A basic biscuit dough uses two cups of flour, a tablespoon of baking powder, a teaspoon of salt, and six tablespoons of butter, rubbed into the dry out ingredients in large chunks or flakes. Some people freeze the butter and grate it.

A probe thermometer inserted in the center of the cobbler should reach 200°F in the thickest part of the topping. The filling should be bubbly around the sides, and the tops of the biscuits should be more deep amber than golden.

Cobbler is usually topped with batter or biscuits in lieu of crust. Cobbler's name comes from its sometimes cobbled texture, which is a result of spooning or dropping the topping over the fruit rather than distributing it equally. This way, the filling can peek through.

What is the difference between a betty and a buckle? ›

A brown betty is both layered and topped with sweet butter crumbs. The crumbs should be dry to absorb between the layers while remaining crunchy on top. Breadcrumbs or graham-cracker crumbs are used in this dessert. A buckle is generally made with berries folded in cake batter before baking with some crumb topping.

Many sweet and savory pie recipes require pre-baking or "blind baking" a crust. No one really knows where the term got its name, but "blind" baking a crust means baking it without a filling.

Baking: Start baking the apple crisp covered with foil. This allows the apples to soften without any risk of the topping over-browning. After about 20 minutes, remove the foil and let the crisp finish cooking uncovered. Once the juices are bubbling, the topping is golden brown, and the apples are tender, it is done!

Picking the wrong apples

Softer apples like Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, or Macintosh break down too much in the heat of the oven, basically turning into applesauce. So avoid those, and opt for a variety that's firm and crisp like Granny Smith, Fuji, Gala, or Honeycrisp.

The cooking time and spices cooking down into the apples, caused the dark color and mush. I have made pies professionally, and Granny Smith does often get mushy. Their tart flavor profile still makes them desirable in pie. 400' for 50 min to 1hr should do it!

Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Apple crisp is a dessert made with a streusel topping. In the US, it is also called apple crumble, a word which refers to a different dessert in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

What Makes A Good Apple For Apple Crisp? The best apples for baking keep their structure under heat, which prevents the chunks of fruit from turning into mush after baking. The firm and crisp Granny Smith and Honeycrisp varieties are popular apples to use in apple pies and apple crisps.

The lemon juice will keep the apples from turning brown. Set your prepared apple crisp aside on the counter until ready to bake. Put the apple crisp in the oven to bake just as you are serving dinner. And by the time dinner is over, this warm syrupy dessert will be ready.

A crumble is just a crisp without oats in the streusel. It may feature nuts, but the streusel topping is usually a simple combination of butter, flour, and sugar that is more clumpy than that of a crisp.