This gingerbread apple crisp elevates the traditional apple crisp to a company-or holiday-worthy winter dessert. Made with both apples and pears, plenty of warm, cozy spices, and gingerbread crumbs, this easy holiday dessert is also gluten free, grain free, and low in sugar.
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Gingerbread apple crisp takes ordinary apple crisp to a whole new level!
The ordinary version of apple crisp is as comforting as it is delicious. Pear crisp is a little different with its subtly delicate flavor, but equally consoling. We enjoy them both often, especially through the fall and winter months.
Fruit desserts in general are conveniently adaptable to special diets, and very amenable to reducing the sugar. Provided you can have fruit, the sweetness is mostly already present. Add selected spices and a topping, and bingo! Easier than apple pie, and maybe tastier. Even gluten free and grain free!
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What makes this Gingerbread Apple Crisp with pears special?
This gingerbread apple crisp includes pears, though it works well with only pears or only apples as well. Somehow, the combination enlivens the flavor into something more than either fruit on its own.
Apple is a bit more robust and familiar. Pears are intensely sweet with a delicate floral vibe. Good separately, together they equal more than the sum of their parts.
The gingerbread gives the dessert a particularly cozy, decadent flavor. Serve this crisp for a holiday, or to company, or for your Sunday dinner… or just on an ordinary Tuesday!
For the gingerbread, I like to use something I have left over. In the photos, I used the leftover bits of this gingerbread recipe. I got into it as soon as people were done eating– before anyone scarfed up the leftovers! With its cake texture, it was easy to crumble up in my fingers. It was cut weirdly because I had been photographing it…
However, you could use any gingerbread cake or loaf. It also works well to use crushed gingerbread cookies. If you can’t crumble them up in your fingers easily, either stick them in a food processor to grind them up or roll them into crumbs with a rolling pin.
Use store bought or homemade gingerbread, cake or cookies. Just be sure you are happy with the ingredients. (See below for a couple more links to recipes if you don’t want to use mine in the above link!)
How to Make Gingerbread Apple Pear Crisp
Prepare your fruit. Peel (you could leave the peels on if you prefer), core and chop. This is the hardest part… It will be a little easier, at least with the apples, if you use a nifty device to do the work. This old-fashioned tool is one of my favorite kitchen implements, with uses beyond apple peeling!
Mine is too old to link, but it is like this one that clamps onto the counter or a table. This one that suctions onto the counter works similarly without needing to clamp onto the edge of your surface.
Once you have your fruit prepared, mix it into a 9×13″ baking dish and fold in your chosen spices. You don’t need to grease the pan. You can add a tablespoon of cornstarch or arrowroot powder, but you don’t strictly need them. Leave out if you are avoiding starches, like on the GAPS diet.
For the topping, start with your gingerbread crumbs– the star of the topping– and build from there. Crumble or crush them to equal a cup of crumbs. This is a flexible recipe– you could use more!
You need a half cup of cold butter plus 1 1/2 -2 cups of other dry ingredients. In the photo, I used about 1 1/2 cups of chopped cinnamon walnuts. Plain nuts work well, and so would any seeds you are able to eat or coconut flakes.
Can I use oats?
If grains are part of your diet right now, then oats would be a wonderful choice. More like traditional apple crisp. Other grains in a flaked form, like quinoa flakes, would work, too. I made this recently with sprouted oats plus some chopped walnuts, which I recommend!
Sprouted oats have been soaked and dried to remove anti-nutrients, making them less damaging to the gut and easier to digest, in addition to making the nutrition in the oats more available to us. I bought mine from Thrive Market, but many grocery stores and even Costco carry them. Or make your own!
Cut the cold butter into the gingerbread crumbs. Since the gingerbread is sweetened, you may not need to add sugar. You can add 1/4 cup coconut sugar, honey, sugar substitute, etc, if you want. Stir in whatever you have chosen as far as nuts, coconut, oats, etc.
Sprinkle the topping over the fruit and bake at 350° F for 30-40 minutes. It is done when the fruit is soft and bubbling and the topping is toasty. Serve plain or with whipped cream, ice cream, whipped cultured cream, custard sauce, etc.
Gingerbread Apple Crisp with Pears
Ingredients
- 4-5 apples
- 4-5 pears
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp cloves
- 1/2 C cold butter, cut up
- 1 C gingerbread crumbs
- 1 1/2 -2 C chopped nuts or seeds, coconut flakes, oats, or a combination
- 1/4 C coconut sugar optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F.
- Peel, core, and chop apples and pears into bite-sized pieces. Toss with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves and spread in 9×13" or similar-sized baking dish.
- Cut butter into pieces and work into the gingerbread crumbs with a pastry blender, two forks, or your fingers until they are mixed into clumpy bits. They may not be crumb-like as with most apple crisp recipes– that is OK.
- Mix in the nuts (or coconut flakes, oats, etc.) and spread over the fruit. If the mixture isn't crumbly, try to separate the clumps out into smaller clumps. They will bake sort of like tiny cookies over the fruit.
- Bake 30-40 minutes until the fruit is soft and bubbling and the top is toasty brown.
Make Gingerbread Apple Crisp your way!
- Sweeten the apple-pear mixture– I never do because I don’t think it is needed. If you want it sweeter, add a couple tablespoons of honey, maple syrup, sugar, sugar substitute, etc. The sugar will caramelize and thicken it a little as it cools, and that is quite nice.
- Add a tablespoon of starch or flour to the fruit to thicken it.
- For a dairy-free crisp, use a gingerbread made without dairy with coconut oil, lard, or other non-dairy fat in the topping.
- Change the spices– add more, less, leave something out– or try with allspice or cardamom.
- Play around with the topping– the gingerbread in some form is necessary to the flavor, but you can try different nuts or oats and combinations of them. If you have a total of 2 1/2-3 cups combined of gingerbread crumbs and other things, it will work out.
- You can use only apples or only pears, or more of one or the other.
Can I eat this on the GAPS diet?
It needs tweaking, but you could achieve a fairly GAPS-friendly version. The main problem for GAPSters is the sugar in the gingerbread recipe I used. Sugar and molasses are out! Here is how you could do it:
- use a GAPS-compliant gingerbread recipe like this one or this one
- don’t add sugar or starch to the fruit, and don’t add sugar to the topping– honey or date syrup is OK if you want
- for the topping, stick with the gingerbread crumbs plus coconut or carefully prepared nuts or seeds, like this. No oats while on GAPS, even sprouted ones!
- For topping, sweeten and whip cultured cream or coconut cream, or try Russian custard on top
There you have it! Such a warm and festive apple crisp variation!