Experiment 7: Cranberry Apple Crisp

Figure 1. Apple Cranberry Crisp

Introduction

Ahh...Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving can mean different things to different people.  For some, its a highly anticipated chance to make up lost time with family and friends.  For others, it's about the opportunity to stuff oneself silly with turkey, stuffing, and cranberries.  Lastly, it can serve as a much-needed break from work or school.

For us, it's all three.  Therefore to combine all three of these elements, on one of our days off, we took a recipe born out of a family tradition, and made food.

Here's how we ranked this dish:

Figure 2. Our NFPA Ratings for cranberry apple crisp.

Prep Time: 40 minutes.  While the dish is simple and mixing everything doesn't take very long, it's important to remember to leave enough time to dice five large apples. This will take a few minutes, especially if you make this by yourself.

Difficulty: 2. Cranberry Apple Crisp.  Banana Bread.  Same thing...in a way.

Course: This is undoubtedly a dessert.  It's not even one of those desserts that can double as a breakfast item.  It's too tart.  It doesn't make a great midnight snack or lunch for the same reason.  This is a true dessert.

Figure 3. Granny Smith Apples!

Materials
Apple & Cranberry Mix
1) Granny Smith Apples - 5
2) Ocean Spray Whole Cranberry Sauce - 16 oz. can.  2 - 12 oz. cans. (Yes, we know 12+12≠16.)
3) Sugar - 0.25 cups
4) Flour - 2 tablespoons

Dry Mix Toppings
1) Oatmeal (quick cook or regular) - 1 cup
2) Brown Sugar - 0.5 cups
3) Chopped Walnuts - 0.25 cups
4) Flour - 0.33 cups
5) Cinnamon - 1 teaspoon
6) Butter (melted) - 0.25 cups

Procedure
1) Dice the apples into 1cm pieces.  Mix the cranberries with the apples.  Put the mix into a greased Pyrex dish, 8x8 inches or 9x13 inches.
2) Mix all the dry ingredients.  Spread the dry mix over the top of the apple-cranberry mix.
3) Bake at 375 ºF for 30 to 40 minutes.

Figure 4. Mixture of dry ingredients (left), and mixture of apples and
cranberries (right).

Results
Ingredients for this recipe were purchased at Joe Caputo's, Aldi, and a few other grocery stores. Typically, gala apples are grown in both the US and the UK.  We figure that our apples were grown in the US and then delivered to the grocery store.  However, if they had been UK gala apples, they would have British accents! to be imported by the US, sniffed by the beagles in customs, and eventually sent to the grocery stores.

The result...Not bad!  In fact, we'd say this one was pretty tasty!  The Cranberry Apple Crisp may have been overshadowed by the reprisal of our PCRs and the five pies that were present until eaten, but it held its own admirably on the dessert table.

Discussion
7,000 different varieties of apples are grown around the world, including 2,500 in the US alone (University of Illinois, 2012).  However, we as humans didn't develop all of these varieties on our own.  Unlike bananas and some other fruits, apples are capable of sexual reproduction, which means that each fruit is genetically distinct from its parents, and conversely, none of the fruits produced from one parent is the same.  Over several generations, different traits start to appear, and due to a process called genetic drift, these traits become more and more distinct with each mating cycle.  As a result, you get a whole bunch of different apples with different qualities - different colors, flavors, shapes, etc.  When people started to notice that they liked certain traits, they started selecting for the apples that carried them by continuing to breed them only with each other.

The recipe called for granny smith apples, usually the most tart variety that you'd find at your grocery store.  Instead, we used gala apples.  Gala apples are less tart and more sweet than granny smith apples, which perhaps helped balance out the tartness of the cranberries.

Suggestions for improvement:

1) To be blunt, the crisp fell apart on us whenever we tried to cut a piece.  Not that that's a bad thing.  We're sure that was supposed to happen.  However, we feel that we shouldn't have to put forth that much effort to eat dessert, especially after a big meal.  What to do, then?  After some research, we have concluded that the best additive for this job is probably cornstarch.  A few tablespoons of cornstarch with thicken the jellied cranberries, which will stabilize it.  In addition, unlike flour, cornstarch will maintain the jelly's translucency.  Overall, the addition of cornstarch will make this dessert easier to serve, easier to eat, and will maintain its aesthetic.


2) Apple Cranberry Crisp would taste better with a scoop of cinnamon ice cream on top.  That's a fact.  A few days after making and eating this recipe, we were informed that it is actually best served hot with whipped cream on top.  That sounds great too!

Future Directions

Deep-dish pizza is still on hold, but we're getting there!  Same idea with the spice tuna sushi and everything else we sometimes list in this section.

References

1) Sandman, C and Simmons, J.  November long, long ago.  "Cranberry Apple Crisp".  I'm Writing My Own Cookbook.  p. 57.  

2) University of Illinois Extension. 2012. "Apple Facts". Apples and More.