Cranberry Apple Crisp Recipe
Don’t you just love the kind of weather that calls for cozy sweaters? When you’re all snuggled up in one, the only thing left to do is make a cozy dessert. That’s where this cranberry apple crisp recipe comes in.
This easy dessert is loaded with warm spices that bring out the best of the fresh cranberries. It’s the perfect fruit crisp where the sweet apples perfectly balance the tartness of the cranberries.
Did I mention this was an easy apple cranberry crisp, too? Well, I’m telling you again.
And since it takes only a few minutes to prep and bake for about 40 minutes, you will soon be well on your way to baking up something blissful in your kitchen!
Ingredients for Delicious Cranberry Apple Crisp
I love this apple-cranberry crisp because you only need a 9×9 baking dish and a large mixing bowl to put it together.
The ingredients are all simple enough to grab on your next trip to the grocery store if you don’t already have them.
Granny Smith apples are perfect for this, and tart cranberries are starting to be plentiful at the store, too. If you can’t find fresh cranberries, frozen ones will work.
Filling
- Apples (peeled, cored, and sliced)
- Cranberries
- Granulated sugar
- Cornstarch
- Cinnamon
- Allspice
- Nutmeg
Crisp Crumble Topping
- Granulated sugar
- Brown sugar
- Rolled oats
- All-purpose flour
- Butter (softened)
- Pecan halves
Full printable recipe with measurements and instructions listed at the bottom of the post in the recipe card.
How to Make This Easy Cranberry Apple Crisp
When you’re ready to get baking, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease your 9×9 pan with some butter or nonstick cooking spray.
Toss your apple slices with the cranberries, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg.
Put the ingredients into the prepared baking dish.
Use your large mixing bowl to combine both the granulated sugar and brown sugar, along with the oats and the flour for the crumble topping.
You’ll then want to mix in your softened butter until this mixture has a crumbly texture.
Once the oat streusel topping has been mixed up, layer it on top of the fruit filling in your baking dish.
Put the pecans on top of this and then bake for about 40 minutes on the center oven rack.
The topping should be golden brown, and the filling will be bubbly and juicy when finished.
Allow it to cool down slightly before serving, or let it cool fully, though we love to eat it when it’s still warm, especially when it’s chilly outside.
This dessert filled with juicy cranberries and tart apples is perfect for the holiday season, with those fall flavors bursting through with every bite.
If you want to make it a little healthier, you can swap the sugar in the fruit mixture with pure maple syrup. Adding orange zest to the fruit filling is also a great twist for these fall flavors.
And, of course, there’s nothing quite like a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top to make this an even more indulgent treat!
Recipe Tips for Apple-Cranberry Crisp
- If you want, you can chop your pecans and mix them into the crumble topping. It’s good this way, too, but adding them halved on top toasts them a bit and gives them an even more indulgent flavor.
- When making fruit crisp desserts like this, you often see cold butter as one of the ingredients. I think letting it soften first makes it so much easier to incorporate into the topping, and you still get the same textural results.
- What you want to avoid is using melted butter. Melted butter will completely change that crumble texture. It’s not that it will taste bad, but the whole point is to have a little crunch on top.
More Delicious Recipes
- 3-ingredient cranberry sauce from Southern Home Express
- Baked oatmeal muffins
- Apple pie
- 3-ingredient apple dump cake
- Apple cinnamon bubble-up cake
If you’re planning your Thanksgiving feast, you don’t want to forget about your dessert table. This simple dessert is truly perfect.
It comes out with amazing flavors and well-balanced spices and textures. The aroma this homey dessert creates is also a wonderful, welcoming fragrance for your friends and family when they arrive.
Some desserts need to look their best, but with a fruit crisp, it’s a lot less stressful, especially for new home cooks.
Check out the recipe card below, and you’ll find out everything you need, along with all the steps to make your cranberry apple crisp dessert a success!
Cranberry Apple Crisp Recipe
Ingredients
Filling
- 3 cups peeled cored, and sliced apples
- 1 cup cranberries fresh or frozen
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons cornstarch
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon allspice
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Crisp ingredients:
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 3/4 cup rolled oats
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup butter softened
- 1/2 cup pecan halves
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9-inch by 9-inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray or butter.
- Toss apples and cranberries with the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg.
- Layer the mixture in the bottom of the baking dish.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine granulated and brown sugars, oats, and flour.
- Mix in butter until crumbly.
- Layer over the fruit in the baking dish and arrange pecans on top.
- Bake in the center of the oven for about 40 minutes, until golden on top and the filling is juicy.
Notes
- You can mix chopped pecans into the crisp topping, but I like the way adding them on top toasts them. So delicious!
- Many crisp and crumble recipes specify using cold butter, but I find that hard to mix in, and the end crisp is not different. On the other hand, using softened butter changes the texture a lot to be less crumbly.
- If you have leftovers, you can store them in an airtight container or cover them with plastic wrap and refrigerate them.
