Fruit Crisp

NTM stands for New-to-Me, a regular feature here at Not Exactly Bento. With the start of my bento-making in 2007, I began to try many new foods to expand my palate and my recipe files. New-to-Me has expanded into all sorts of food items that I now try and review. Here is the latest item I’ve tried. For the new-to-me archive, click here.

Sunday night I realized I had a tub of cherries and a tub of blueberries that I just wasn’t eating through fast enough.  While I like both, buying a pound of each maybe wasn’t such a good idea as I can’t eat that much fruit that quickly by myself.  I decided I would try to make a fruit crisp, having nearly all the ingredients for that.  I chose a crisp over a cobbler for two reasons.  First, I didn’t have any milk left in the house and a cobbler topping needs milk.  Second, I’ve been searching for a good crisp topping FOREVER and have yet to find one.

I combined two recipes to get what I wanted.  First, I used this Emeril Cherry Cobbler recipe to give me what I needed for the fruit portion of the dessert.  I halved the ingredients (2 cups of cherries, 1 cup of blueberries) and cooked it down in a saucepan.  In fact, I used less than half the required amount of sugar since the cherries I had on hand were more sweet than tart.  Tasting the concoction during the simmering process found it to be a wee bit too sweet.  I added 1 tsp of apple cider vinegar.  This cut the sweetness and added a nice underflavor to the fruit filling that I quite enjoyed.  It was just enough to work and not enough to overpower.  YAY ME!

The crisp topping I got from this Ina Garten recipe for the topping.  The topping was okay…almost what I was looking for but not quite.  I’m wondering if I were to cook this again but cook for a longer and slower temp as the Ina Garten recipe suggested (rather than the temp I cooked per Emeril) if that topping would come out a bit better.  I think I might also cut back on the brown sugar a bit as well.  Because the topping had a bit too much sugar for my tastes..and could have used a few more oats.

All in all, not too bad for a thrown together dessert and a first try.

Be the bento everyone!