Old-Fashioned Summer Fruit Crisp

After baking that ah-mazing Cherry Pie last weekend I was chomping at the bit to find something else from my Robin Hood Flour cook book to bake this week. 

My favourite way to decide what to make is to see what is local, lovely and in season in the produce section.  This week marked the arrival of BC peaches in stores around here so it was easy to choose a bag of those beauties to bring home. 

Not wanting to keep things too simple I also grabbed a huge container of fresh BC blueberries because I love combining peaches with berries.

Since our weather here this weekend was the hottest and most Summery of the year, we knew we’d grill out a meal or two so I opted for a dessert that would compliment our simple dinner.  Fruit Crisp!

It’s a bit of a contradiction to turn the hot oven on on the hottest days of the year, but somehow I have always associated a beautiful fresh fruit crisp with Summer eating.  Am I alone on this one?

Yet again, the Robin Hood people did not lead me astray.  Thanks to a perfect combination of oats, flour, brown sugar and butter it might be one of the best crisp toppings I’ve ever made.  The juicy fresh peaches didn’t hurt either.

Old Fashioned Peach-Blueberry Crisp

adapted from Robin Hood Flour Cook Book

yields 6 servings

Ingredients:

• 3-4 cups fresh peaches, peeled and sliced (including any juices)
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 3/4 cup old fashioned rolled oats
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup butter, chilled
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.  Spray an 8” baking dish with cooking spray.
2. In a large bowl, lightly toss peaches, blueberries, lemon juice and sugar. 
3. In a separate bowl, stir together oats, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in butter with a pastry cutter or two knives (or by hand) until mixture resembles coarse meal.
4. Arrange peach mixture in baking dish.  Sprinkle topping mixture evenly over fruit.
5. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until fruit is tender and topping is golden.  Let stand at least 10 minutes before serving.

Depending on your actual fruit measurements, MyFitnessPal measures this in at around 200 calories per serving. Not too shabby!

As it turned out we ended up letting the finished crisp chill in the fridge overnight and ate it for breakfast instead of dessert.  It’s like a super fruity, beautiful baked oatmeal so we just replaced the usual ice cream topping with some lovely vanilla yogurt and it worked for me!

Use this Crisp Topping over any combination of your favourite Summer fruit.  I plan to put some more of our frozen cherries to use, and when apricots show their cute little faces in stores you can bet they’ll find themselves under a blanket of crispy oats. 

What other favourite Summer fruit combinations should we try?