“Fruit Cocktail” Crisp

Ingredients

Filling

• 1.5-2
  
  cups cherries, pitted
  
• 1-2
  
  peaches, pitted and diced
  
• 2
  
  tablespoons honey
  
• 1
  
  teaspoon vanilla extract
  
• 1
  
  dash cinnamon
  
• 1
  
  pinch nutmeg
  
• 2
  
  tablespoons minute tapioca
  

Topping

• 2
  
  tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
  
• 1-2
  
  tablespoons honey
  
• .5
  
  teaspoons vanilla extract
  
• 1
  
  pinch salt
  
• 1
  
  dash cinnamon
  
• 1
  
  pinch nutmeg
  
• 2-3
  
  tablespoons whole wheat flour
  
• 1-2
  
  tablespoons steel-cut oatmeal
  
• 2-3
  
  tablespoons rolled oatmeal
  

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375ºF and place a rack in the middle.
2. Get out your baking dish. Here you’ll need a 4-cup oven-safe bowl (mine’s pyrex), which, admittedly, not everyone has. If you’re living by yourself I encourage you to get a set at Target or anywhere that has kitchen things because it’s really helps in cooking smaller amounts of anything ever.
3. Stem and pit your cherries if you haven’t already. Pit and dice the peaches. You’ll want to put your pitted cherries into the baking dish so you know about how much you have. You’ll want it about 3/4 full of fresh fruit. Use more cherries if you want it to taste more like cherries and more peaches if you want it to taste more peachy.
4. In a mixing bowl large enough to fit your fruit, whisk together honey, vanilla extract, cinnamon and nutmeg. When incorporated, add the tapioca and whisk that in. If you’re using sour cherries or want your crisp on the sweeter side, add more honey than I did. I prefer the natural sweetness to shine through.
5. Transfer cut fruit into the mixing bowl and mix so that the fruit is covered with the honey-tapioca mixture. Let sit for 10-15 minutes. (If it winds up sitting longer, it’s no big deal).
6. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk some air into the butter. Add honey and mix that in. Taste it and see if you like how sweet it is. Add more if you want it sweeter. (Mine was hardly sweet at all, which I prefer). Add vanilla extract and spices. Whisk until fully incorporated.
7. Now start adding the flour 1 tablespoon at a time. You’re looking for a consistency rather than being exact. When there’s enough flour, it’ll stop looking glassy and start looking textured.
8. Add steel-cut oatmeal. This, again, is not a science. Just do it until it looks like there’s plenty of it in there. It might get hard to whisk, but that’s okay.
9. Add the oatmeal until it hardly sticks to the mixture anymore. Make sure you mix it all in there! The mixture should be clumpy at this point. If it’s not, just add some more oatmeal!
10. Now that the tapioca has set, pour the fruit back into the oven-safe dish. Make sure you get all the juices out of the mixing bowl and into that dish! Crumble up the topping and mush it onto the fruit. It shouldn’t all be one giant glob, but a bunch of littler crumbly things that cover the top of the fruit.
11. Place your baking dish on a cookie sheet lined with tinfoil/ a baking mat and throw it in the oven to cook for 20 minutes or until the juices are thick and bubbly. Since the topping has honey in it, it’s going to brown pretty quickly, so keep an eye on it and throw some tinfoil on top when it starts getting too brown for your liking.
12. Let it cool a bit before you serve it or you will probably burn yourself. I don’t want that on my conscience and you don’t want those burns on your lips/tongue. Serve warm plain or with ice cream or whatever you usually eat a fruit crisp with.