How To Make Any Fruit Crisp in 4 Easy Steps

Crisps are quintessential dessert fare, with many of us having fond memories of spring rhubarb or fall apple crisps in the memory banks of our childhood. Maybe the reason they show up so often, with their warm bites of buttery oat topping giving way to jammy fruit, is because they are entirely utilitarian. Their ingredients are few, they’re best at using up fruit that’s going soft, and you can make one without a recipe, completely by heart.

Once you understand the basics of making a crisp topping, you can use literally any fruit to make a sweet and juicy filling. Here’s how to make a fruit crisp in four easy steps.

Crisps, crumbles, and cobblers often get lumped together as the same dessert, but they are distinctly different. Cobbler requires a biscuit-like dough with a sturdy structure and is more like a distant cousin to crisps and crumbles. Crisps and crumbles are like sisters. They share very similar ingredients and once baked their texture is much the same.

Here’s the distinction: Crisps always include whole oats, while crumbles do not. Both are held together with a mixture of flour, sugar, and butter and bake up into crisp and tender pastry not unlike streusel.

Read more: What’s the Difference Between a Cobbler, Crumble, and Crisp?

I promised a crisp in four easy steps and I plan to deliver. Here are the essentials.

• Selecting and preparing the fruit.
• Making the crisp topping.
• How to know when the crisp is done.
• Serving the crisp or crumble to applause.

Crisps are a causal fruit dessert, and by that I mean their requirements for fruit are loose and allow for creativity and resourcefulness. A standard crisp uses about six cups of chopped or sliced fruit, roughly 1 1/2 pounds. Almost all fruit can go into a crisp raw, with one major exception: Apples should be par-cooked before being turned into a crisp. Peeling peaches, plums, and other fruit is totally optional. You can also select frozen fruit for crisps. Say a peach crisp craving strikes in the dead of winter — just make sure that frozen fruit is thawed before baking.

It is possible to make a fruit crisp without cornstarch, if you’re out or just want to skip it, but cornstarch will magically transform the baking, bubbling fruit juices into a thick and velvety sauce. You’ll see that this recipe calls for two tablespoons of cornstarch, but you can add more or less depending on the juiciness of your fruit. Juicier fruit will need more cornstarch.

Crisp topping is very much like making a crumb or streusel topping. You work butter into a mixture of flour, oats, and sugar until the mixture can hold together when pressed. Some crisp toppings call for working in cold butter, but I’ve found that working with melted butter allows the flour to hydrate better, leading to a crispier topping.

Crisp toppings freeze incredibly well. You can make crisp topping in large batches and freeze it for crisp anytime.

Learn how: An Ingenious Trick for Easy Fruit Crumble All Summer Long

Juicy, warm crisp is a pleasure in its own right, but when topped with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, or even crème fraîche, crisp becomes a dinner party-worthy dessert. Cold crisp is a borderline indulgent breakfast as a topping for your morning yogurt.