This straightforward home made cherry crisp combines juicy, candy cherries with a crisp and crumbly brown sugar oat topping. The filling comes collectively in minutes, and there’s no pie dough to roll, chill, or fuss with. For additional taste, add a splash of bourbon. Serve heat with vanilla ice cream for a basic summer season dessert.

I initially revealed this recipe in 2018 and have since added new images and extra success suggestions.

Whereas I like a superb home made cherry pie, generally I would like all that candy cherry taste with out making pie dough. Enter: cherry crisp. It has every thing we love about fruit desserts—a effervescent, jammy fruit filling and a golden oat streusel topping—however with a fraction of the trouble.

And in contrast to pie, you may serve it straight from the baking dish whereas it’s nonetheless heat. In reality, I extremely encourage it! A wonderful cause to like peach crisp, strawberry crisp, and apple crisp too.

If you happen to’re in search of a easy, straightforward dessert that lets contemporary cherries shine, this cherry crisp is it.

Why You’ll Love This Cherry Crisp

There are many cherry crisp recipes on the market, however this one stands out for its stability of texture and taste. The cherry filling turns into thick and jammy because it bakes, whereas the oat topping stays crisp and crumbly thanks to 1 essential ingredient: very chilly butter.

A contact of vanilla enhances the cherries’ pure sweetness, and when you’d like an additional layer of taste, add somewhat bourbon.

This cherry crisp is:

• Straightforward to make with simply 2 mixing bowls
• Nice with both contemporary or frozen cherries
• Topped with a buttery oat crumble
• Scrumptious with or with out bourbon
• Even higher with vanilla ice cream
• Prepared in about 1 hour—and in contrast to pie, there’s no want to attend for it to chill fully earlier than serving.

Which Cherries Are Greatest for Cherry Crisp?

Use your favourite cherry selection. I sometimes use darkish candy cherries. You might additionally use Rainier cherries. If you happen to go for tart/bitter cherries, enhance the sugar barely to stability their tart taste. See the Notes under the recipe for quantity.

Recent cherries are perfect throughout cherry season, however frozen cherries work fantastically too. Merely thaw them first and blot away extra moisture.

Different Elements You Want

• Sugar: You want granulated sugar to sweeten the cherry filling, and brown sugar for the topping.
• Cornstarch: Needed thickening agent for the filling.
• Vanilla & Almond Extracts: Key for implausible taste.
• Salt: To reinforce and stability all of the flavors.
• Flour: The structural base of the crumb topping.
• Cinnamon: The shining star of a superb streusel.
• Butter: Chilly butter is the key to a crisp, crumbly topping. Similar to with pie crust and biscuits, holding the butter chilly helps create irresistible texture because the crisp bakes. I wish to take the butter out of the fridge upfront, minimize it into cubes, after which place the cubed butter within the freezer till I’m prepared to make use of it.
• Oats: Old style complete rolled oats create the perfect crisp topping texture. Skip fast oats right here as a result of they received’t present the identical hearty crumble.

Make the Crisp Topping First

Notice: If you happen to want a gluten-free various, use the topping from my gluten-free apple crisp.

You want the identical components we use for apple crisp: brown sugar, oats, butter, cinnamon, and flour. Be happy so as to add some sliced almonds for added crunch, or skip them for a nut-free dessert.

I went forwards and backwards about including cinnamon, however rapidly got here to my senses as a result of oatmeal desserts are nothing with out cinnamon and cinnamon makes every thing style like grandma’s baking. So cinnamon is a non-negotiable on the subject of streusel/crumble/crisp toppings.

The trick with this crumble topping—in order that it doesn’t soften and lose lots of texture—is to make use of very chilly butter, similar to with pie crust and home made biscuits. Combine brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon collectively after which minimize in cubes of chilly butter. Add the oats final since you don’t need them to interrupt down whenever you minimize the butter in.

As soon as your topping is made, place it within the freezer till you’re prepared to make use of it. I do know I sound like a damaged report, however another time for the seats within the again: chilly crumbles are the important thing to crisp topping!

Straightforward Cherry Crisp Filling

For the filling, merely combine the components collectively after which pour into the baking dish. No pre-cooking steps needed.

What takes probably the most time is pitting these cherries. Pitting cherries is the pits. You’ll save your self lots of time through the use of a cherry pitter.

Every time I clear out my Gizmos and Devices Drawer (the official title), I ask myself, do I really want this factor? After which I bear in mind spending about 12 hours pitting cherries just a few years in the past for 1 pie and realized that cherry pitters, whereas seldom referred to as into service, are needed!

No cherry pitter? No downside. See my recipe Notice about utilizing frozen cherries (that are already pitted).

Spoon the cherry filling right into a baking dish, then sprinkle the chilly streusel on high and bake. When it’s accomplished, the filling needs to be effervescent across the edges. This means the cornstarch has totally activated and the filling may have thickened correctly.

When you can dig in just about instantly, I like to recommend testing your persistence and holding off for 10 minutes. A brief cooling interval helps the filling set barely and makes serving simpler. Use that point to get out the vanilla ice cream and make some contemporary whipped cream.

That’s it—dessert’s able to eat in below an hour.