Don't Forget About Me: Pear and Apple Crisp

While it doesn't happen often, occasionally, I sorta kinda forget a few pieces of fruit are in the crisper. Well, it's not forgetting them so much as I have a plan for them that I never get around to. It's one of those "best laid plans" sort of things. Half the time, I've actually forgotten what the plan was.

And so it goes for the two remaining pears in the bottom of my fridge, part of a half dozen that eventually were made into jam. These lonely fellows were destine for greater things but, alas!

Worried by the browning skin on the one, I peeled off the skin to find that it was actually perfectly ripe and ready underneath. I peeled them both and sliced them up, adding into a bowl a bag of frozen Granny Smith apple slices, saved back from a good sale earlier in the year. After peeling and adding one more fresh apple, a Gala, I had enough fruit (4 cups) for a fruit crisp.

Preheating the oven to 350, I dug out a 9x9 baking dish and lightly sprayed it. (*For a 9x13 dish, double the recipe).

To the fruit, I added cinnamon, cloves and fresh nutmeg. To this, in went 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/3 cup of AP flour and a 1/2 cup of dried cranberries; and I  tossed the fruit with my hands until all the fruit was coated with the mixer and put it into the baking dish.

Using the same mixing bowl, I added 1/2 cup of flour to 1/2 cup of oatmeal, more cinnamon and 1/4 cup of firmly packed brown sugar. I used brown sugar instead of my usual white granulated because pears go really well with butterscotch-which is made with brown sugar; it also added to the rustic goodness of the crisp. To the dry mix, I tossed in 1/4 cup of butter that was diced. I blended them all together, using my hands just as I would when making biscuits--leaving chunks of butter the size of pea.

Over the waiting fruit went the crumble mixture and into the oven it went.

After baking for 35 minutes, my fall crisp was bubbling and golden and ready for a little bit of vanilla icecream.

Those poor pears....they achieved usefulness in the end. Waste not.