The Lazy Baker’s Wood Fired Apple Crisp

I love dessert.  Often times I will look at a dessert menu before I decide what to order in a restaurant.  As I said, I love dessert!  I also love to make dessert but often times dessert takes a lot of time and makes a really big mess.  As much as I love dessert…I hate doing dishes. So this dessert is really quite perfect!  There are few ingredients and few dishes.  Plus this recipe gets a fabulous response from everyone who tries it!

My mother-in-law makes this with cherry pie filling and calls it Cherry Crunch.  I am not a big fan of cherries so I thought why not switch out that cherry pie filling for apple.  It doesn’t get more all-American than Apple pie…or in this case apple crisp.

The ingredients in this dish are store bought.  This is very rare for me. I am a farmers’-market-shopping, make-it-from-scratch cook.  But sometimes after I make a full meal I want a simple dessert that will knock their socks off!  There is truly something magical about Bisquick.  Bisquick can make savory dishes and sweet dishes.  It can be pancakes, sausage balls or biscuits. However, it is especially delicious in the topping for this Apple Crisp.  It just needs a little doctoring up in the form of sugar and cinnamon.  Butter is the glue that holds this crumbly topping together.

Homemade apple filling would be amazing and if you have the time to prepare it by all means you should go for it.  When I make this, I am typically looking for something fast and easy that will wow a crowd.  I use canned apple pie filling. The more cans of filling you use the more fruity it will be.  I like a moderately fruity filling with a LOT of crunchy cinnamon topping.

For the wood fired oven, I like to use a cast iron skillet.  I lightly buttered the inside of the pan before adding the pie filling. This time I used almost 2 cans of pie filling. The apples were spread evenly over the bottom of the pan.

The dry ingredients and melted butter were mixed in a bowl to form a crumb topping.  If you like more crunchy cinnamon-y goodness, use all of the topping.  If you are more of an apple fan, discard some of the topping.

I used every single, solitary crumb that was in that dish…I can’t imagine not using every morsel as it is like the most amazing crumbly churro.  I have to admit I sometimes just pick little balls of crunch topping off and eat them when my family and friends aren’t looking and even sometimes when they are!

Slide the pan into a wood fired oven that has a small active flame to keep convection going and an oven temperature between 400 and 500 degrees.  The pan was kept to the far side of the oven opposite the fire but completely inside. It took approximately 15 minutes to get golden brown on top and just a little bubbly on the inside.**Note: Keep a close eye on your apple crisp because if your oven is too hot it will burn quickly. We learned this the hard way after trying to make our dessert too soon after pizza this week.

Remove the pan from the oven and let it cool for several minutes to allow for the filling to set up slightly.  Scoop into individual dishes and serve with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.  This would also be really cute in individual cast iron dishes for serving with a scoop of ice cream on top.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, my mother-in-law makes this with cherry pie filling.  So keep in mind, if apple is not your thing, you can use other fruit fillings as well.  If you have extra time, you could certainly make filling from scratch and take this easy dish to the next amazing level.

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