Apple Crisp with Date Caramel | A very fall-themed dessert (and a fail-proof crumble recipe!)

Apple Crumble with Date Caramel, our next episode #sponsored by Staub! This time it is #madeinstaub in their 3.5-quart braiser, which is not only the most beautiful way to serve a crumble, but the best way to cook it, too.

LINKS TO STAUB:
THE BRAISER: https://link.zwilling.com/justine_snacks/braiser
MY FAVORITE DUTCH OVEN: https://link.zwilling.com/justine_snacks/7qt-dutch-oven

The full recipe is on my Substack linked here:
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I saw some upsetting content on Instagram this July 5th and it was that July 5th was the start of fall and that’s like I let fall girls have their time. I let you have your moment. I understand August is a big time for you. You’re ready. Enjoy. But I firmly believe that September is the time for when fall starts. Pumpkin it up. Live your truth. Welcome to our first fall episode. We’re making an apple crumble with a date filling. But never again are we going to start fall and July, September. Welcome back to Cooking for Fun. [Music] Now, this is a very special episode of Cooking for Fun because it is our first sponsored episode. Crowd goes wild. I’m so excited. Thank you so much for watching the recipes, for being a part of the channel all the way to the point where we can get a sponsorship. This is a humongous deal for me. It’s also very exciting because the sponsorship is with stove. I have been a longtime fan of their enamel cast iron. This is their brazing dish that you’ve probably seen in countless ones of my videos. I’ve taken it on the grill. I’ve put it on my stove. I put it in the oven. Stove and I were interconnected. I also had the chance to travel to their factory in France. 100% of their cookware gets made in France. And I was able to see how the process is actually done. Their cookware is made from scrap metal that they actually mold and then place an enamel coating on and then turn into the beautiful colors, types of plates, types of molds that you can see. So enamel, fun fact about it, is actually a layer of glass that is adhered onto cast iron. So when you think of cooking on enamel, you’re actually cooking on a thin layer of glass. I think it is one of the most amazing cooking innovations, even though it’s been done for centuries and centuries and centuries. I’m just so grateful that Stove is a sponsor of this video. We’re going to be making this apple crisp in their brazing dish. So, let’s make this crumble. So, this apple crisp has three elements, and all three of them somehow make it taste like fall. Because, again, this is a very fall themed video. I want you to feel seen, heard, taken care of. The first is the crisp element. This crisp is going to be called your I need a crisp recipe. How can I make a crisp recipe? Like you will be able to take this, mold it, adapt it, put it on any fruit, put it on a pie. It’s a crisp that you can have, keep forever. We’re going to season it a little bit with some fall spices that are not your typical baking spices. So that’s element number one. Element number two is a date caramel that’s going to go on the bottom because we’re doing crisp on the bottom and crisp on the top. I’m a double crisper. I’m a giver. So the date caramel is going to add like a nice little syrupy sweet layer that’s not just your average apple crisp. The middle apples. We know them. We love them. We’re going to use sweet apples with a touch of lemon juice for acidity. I’m not a big sour apple girl in this kind of dessert. So first the anytime, any way you need it crisp. That is going to be 280 g of allpurpose flour. It’s about 2 cups. 110 g of granulated sugar. The spice I prefer as my baking spice is cardamom. I don’t see this as a hot take. We’re going to do 1/2 teaspoon because cardamom buns are so popular and I think it’s just like a really nice uh subtle baking spice flavor that’s not your allspice cinnamon clove that’s super predictable. The other one I add in that I think is a really good partner for that nutme. And then cinnamon. I am a bargain shopper when it comes to my cinnamon uh because I use it all the time. So, let’s get in little half teaspoon there. And then wait, wait. Full teaspoon of salt. Half this if you’re using salted butter, but I’m using unsalted today, which is not my preference, so I feel like I’m compensating for something. Mix that together. Now, my butter’s been sitting out for like a minute. So, instead of grading it in, which is an option, I’m going to cut it into chunks. Also, for the people, you know the brand. It matches my socks. Socks. You got to get the Got to get the dogs. They did donate all the butter for the wedding. You did well. Thanks, Carrie Gold. So, again, she’s gotten soft. In an ideal crumble world, this would be a little firmer. But since we are since we are at like little little soft level, we’re going to cut them into bigger chunks, coat them in flour, so then they still maintain like that butter separation that we want even as we work it in. That’s a little Oh my god, my butter is too warm hack for you. Okay, it’s soft, but nobody’s panicking. Nobody panic. So, this was 1/2 cup sugar, 1 cup butter, 2 cups flour. You got it. Memorize it. Never have to look up how to make a crumble ever again. So proud of you. And then we’re going to toss these all together to coat the butter in the flour. This will cool down the butter a little bit, also seal it up so that you’re running less risk of your butter turning into a mess. And then this is really easy to flatten into discs. Kind of like we’re making a pie crust, but we’re actually not going to add any liquid and we have enough butter that we can get to crumble texture without getting close to it being a pie crust. Let’s say you want to make it in a food processor. You absolutely can. Uh it would be easier and quicker. But this is just something satisfying about this. This is the whole point of baking is to like work with your hands, work out some stress. You know what I’m saying? All right. Okay, so we now have this crumble texture. You can see big crumbs, small crumbs. When you gently press it together, it forms one large crumb that easily breaks apart. That’s kind of what you want. I personally love the big crumb bites, like the ones that you get and you’re like, “Oh, yes. This one’s just for me.” So, I like to have a variety, you know, different kind of distribution. So, we got some big, some small, and stopping right before it turns into cookie dough. And the one thing that’ll help us not turn it into cookie dough is we’re adding the oats. Now, this can also be almonds, seeds, nuts. Again, this is like the I need a crumble recipe. What do I use? Use this one. Make it your own. But the oats make it so that we’re not pressing it into cookie dough. They help break everything up. And if you add them too early, they get coated in the butter. They get lost in the sauce. You get it. Beautiful crumble. We’re going to pop this in the fridge while everything else happens. That will actually dry it out a little bit, which is a good thing. You do want that. And then help us keep it really pissy. Really good to assemble. Next up, we’re going to take a little butter warmer and we’re going to make probably one of my favorite elements, which we talked about, the date caramel. So, this one’s a great example. Your dates are either going to be like dry and like very hard and firm, and that probably means the pit was taken out. Here we have a pit in date, but it’s like juicy and huge. And this is the date that you’re looking for in the grocery store that’s going to give you like the ultimate date caramel because had so many people be making a recipe and they’re like, “You must use different dates than me because I’m getting a completely different result. I’m using the juicy guys. That’s where I invest my money. It’s where I invest my time. I budget accordingly.” So 10 juicy investment worth it because they’re probably expensive dates. Then we’re just going to add a cup of water. It’s like just enough to cover them. We’ll bring that to a boil. As soon as it hits a boil, off the heat. That’s really just to It’s hot hot hot. It’s really just to juice up the dates. And then this is actually the first step. Uh oh, there’s my 1/4 teaspoon. Hell yeah. This is actually the first step in making sticky toffee pudding is you put a little baking soda. I’m going to keep this and then that helps you mash up the dates. So the baking soda and the hot water and mixing everything together will ease this into a paste. Right now you don’t see it, but one sec. Movie magic. So after like about 3 minutes of us pressing, pushing, like kind of smashing up the dates, it goes from like watery dates to like thick dates, trademark term. And then what takes these from being hot dates to date caramel. It’s just two tiny things, 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, which will kind of like as it hits the hot dates bloom, like that spice will get a little bit more aromatic. And then since I think all caramels need to be salty sweet, 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Mix that up. And every time you see this caramel start to look watery, it’ll like settle. There’ll be like a little pool of water sheen on the top. That’s a good sign to go in, mash it, mix it. Just keep checking on it as we do everything else in the recipe. So these are Honey Crisp, which are on the sweeter side of apples. A lot of people ask me my favorite apple. I don’t even know all the varieties yet. Like I find a new variety every fall. These are honey crisp. Universally very delicious. A lot of people use Granny Smith or something with a little more bite, a little more sourness or like acid for their crisps cuz they’re like, “Oh, well, it counters all the sweetness. It counters all that.” I want my apple bite here to be sweet. I want this to be a sweet dessert. How we counter the apples and all that sweetness cuz you know every even desserts need a little bit of acid, a little bit of something. So, how we fix that is merating them in lemon juice. And it won’t taste lemony. It’ll just be like, “Okay, everything’s balanced. We’ve got heavy dates, a pretty sweet crumble, now we’ll have balanced apples.” Now, the way you slice your apple also dictates like the eating experience. I have a very particular way of slicing apples. People go nuts for it on my Instagram stories, and I’m like, it’s just how I slice my apples. So, for this, you can do chunks, but I think it’s prettier when you have them in kind of like thick thick slices, but not slices. Four apples always yields way more apple than I think it should. So, need like four or five apples, then 2 tbsps of brown sugar, 2 tbsp of cornstarch, which just helps everything thicken as it bakes. Get that all in. and the juice of one whole lemon. This helps everything like stick to the apples. So, it’s like it’s like a multi- there’s lots of needs for this lemon. Don’t skip it. And I have clean hands, so just a gentle toss with clean hands. Get everything all nice and coated. So, there’s not a lot of sugar cuz again, the apples themselves are sweet. all of this. Kind of like when you coat strawberries with sugar, they just get like juicier. Same with apples, it’s going to get like really juicy at the bottom. We’re just going to let this sit. I’m going to wash my hands and then we’re going to talk about stove. The one thing I didn’t talk to you about is how I’m a crisp on bottom and a crisp on top believer. Like I love a crisp with with no bottom, but a crisp with a crispy bottom. It’s good. So, since we have our beautiful stove brazing dish that we can cook practically anywhere, we’re going to use it to cook in the oven. It’s just the perfect size. It’s the perfect look for if you want to like place it somewhere for a dinner party. We’re just going to grease the edges. I’ve been getting very precise with measurements. I think writing a cookbook does that to you because the cookbook’s so permanent and so it’s like I can never undo those measurements ever again. So, I wanted them to be absolutely as specific as possible. So, here I’ve also gotten really specific. The crumble that we let kind of firm up. 250 gram of that is going to line the bottom of this. And it’s just going to give a nice like crunch at the bottom. It’s going to get more toasty and golden than the top. And it’s also going to be a good place for the date caramel to settle. Then I’m just going to lightly press this down. You want this, unlike the top crumble, to be a little bit firmer of a layer, kind of flattened, but still a crumble. That’s going to be our bottom layer crust. It’s going to bake for 15 minutes at 375 convection. So, everything is assembled. It’s so funny because baking is an active thing until it becomes extremely passive. So, we’re going to bake that for 15 minutes and then bake for 45 minutes. The results are good, but we’re just going to be sitting around for a bit. Welcome back to my channel, everybody. It’s perfect. We let this go to the perfect amount. Okay, so it looks like a a flattened crumble, which is exactly what it has always been. Our date caramel is really nice and set and cooled. And that’s the the parake of it. And then our date caramel will go all over that. sizzle. There’ll be chunks of dates in here. Don’t worry about it. Whoever gets that piece is a very lucky person. This goes all over the bottom and the apples right on top. Not being too precious, arranging it in a way that it’ll like catch the crumbles when we put them on top. Making some big chunks and some small chunks. And then evenly scattering that on top. We’ve now reached the stage of the crumble that you’re like, “Oh, this is this is the crumble part I’m familiar with.” And I should have mentioned this earlier, but any fall fruit that’s calling to you, like a pear, maybe would be great in this, anything that feels slicable, you know, and then this goes on the top rack so that that crust on the bottom that we already made doesn’t overcook. Say hi, Walter. Walter, that way. Hi, [Laughter] Oh, it looks done. Walter, what do you think? Yeah, that that would burn your little Snoop. Okay, mom has to go to work. You can stay. O, okay. Amazing. We have brown crispy edges, a nice like perfectly golden top. You can see the bubbling around the apples. Again, I always get nervous because other fruits collapse and they’re just juicy immediately. Apples, they take some time. I’m a big believer like give it the time. That took us about 50 to 55 minutes. You really want everything to collapse into itself and be crispy on top. The visual cues are easy. It’s just golden on top. I’m realizing the horrible realization that I don’t have vanilla ice cream to go with this. Walter’s obviously upset about it. He’s like, this in a perfect world would have 30 minutes of cooling time so you get that nice crust. Let’s give it 15. Let’s see what happens. And you can absolutely do this in a baking dish, like a lasagna dish. The thing is, it’s going to be a lot shallower and just like less pretty to present. What I like about stove is like they always are on my counters. I’m always have at least one of their kitchen items out cuz they’re so beautiful. I think they’re the sheicst. And also, I could set this on a table and that’s it. That’s the serving dish. So, yes, you can make it in like an aluminum pan or whatever, but this is the perfect size. had made this recipe for this. I mean, that’s why it’s why we love the brazing dish. I think we’ve waited enough. Let’s cut in. [Music] We waited the perfect amount of time. There is nothing more satisfying than getting in and getting the date caramel, which gets a little purpley. I can’t tell you what chemical reaction is happening. I only think it has something to do with the lemon juice. The date caramel stays nice and gooey and caramelly. Oh my god. Weirdly enough, the cardamom gives ginger snap energy without even trying. So it feels like you have a almost like a biscoff or a ginger snap at the bottom. That date caramel which is I got a chunk of date. So you know there’s a reward around every corner. The only thing missing is the vanilla ice cream. But that’s on me. I believe in your better judgment. And wow, what a way to kick off fall. So thank you for watching another episode of Cooking Fun. We’ll be back in two weeks probably with another fall recipe. Will it be sweet or savory? Tune in to find out. Oh yeah. Mhm. Oh yeah. Hold it. That’s a wrap. Wrap on crumble. [Music]