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This recipe for Brown Butter Apple Crisp is the perfect fall dessert. It’s filled with gooey, warm and spiced apples with a delicious brown butter crisp full of old-fashioned oats and soft walnuts. It’s the perfect balance of savory, sweet with our favorite autumnal spices. Serve this warm with cold vanilla ice cream!
I love all things fall! Give me a pumpkin spice latte, an apple cider doughnut muffin and some olive oil eggs on a crisp morning and I’m a happy girl!
I’m not going to lie, before this recipe came along, my favorite apple recipe was my apple cobbler or my homemade apple pie recipe. It’s the perfect easy and lazy autumnal dessert. But so is this one! It has all the delicious things we want in a dessert: brown butter (yum), soft walnuts, warm old fashioned oats and delicious honey crisp apples with all the fall spices.
Ingredients You’ll Need for this Brown Butter Apple Crisp
- Apples. I love using honey crisp apples because they’re easy to find and absolutely delicious in a savory context or sweet.
- Walnuts. It’s not a surprise but walnuts are probably my favorite variety of nut, especially in desserts. They’re soft and have a buttery texture.
- Spices. This is an apple dessert so you know I had to break out the cinnamon and allspice. We’re not going overboard. It’s just the right amount.
- Butter. We’re adding brown butter to the crisp topping. This is going to give us delicious hints of caramel.
For the rest of the ingredients, please see the recipe index card below!
Recipe Tip
- Different nuts to use. If you don’t have or like walnuts, you can replace them with pecans! It would almost taste have butter pecan vibes (similar to this butter pecan pie.) YUM!
- Different apple varietals. Any baking apple would be great. Such as granny smith, gala, golden delicious or braeburn. If you do use granny smith, I would combine it with another sweeter varietal of apple.
Recipe FAQs
I would say you can definitely prep the topping ahead and stick it in the fridge. The butter will harden but don’t worry, it’ll soften when it hits the oven. You can prep the filling but I would add the juice from 1/2 lemon so that the apples don’t turn brown.
You can make it gluten-free by using a gluten-free all-purpose flour in place of the wheat flour the recipe calls for. Should work out great!
What to Serve with this Brown Butter Apple Crisp
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To Make the Crisp Topping:
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Start by preheating your oven to 350ºF and prepping the dry ingredients for the topping. In a medium size bowl mix together the flour, oats, brown sugar, chopped walnuts, and pinch of salt.
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Cube up butter. In a small saucepan, set over medium heat, add the cubed butter. Once it’s melted, it will begin to foam up and bubble a bit. Allow it to cook until you begin to see lightly browned specks beginning to form. Give it a stir and cook until it’s browned.
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Pour the browned butter and all the brown bits at the bottom of the pan over the dry ingredients and stir together until everything is combined and slightly crumbly. Set aside.
To Make the Filling:
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Peel, core and slice the apples into 1/4″ slices and add to a bowl. Toss the apple slices with the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, allspice, and salt until all the apple slices are evenly coated.
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Spray a 2 quart baking dish (or an 8″ square baking dish works perfectly). Add all the apples and any juices and evenly level them in the dish. Crumble up the crisp topping and add it evenly over the top, it’s going to seem like way too much and but’s ok; it’ll cook down in the oven.
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Place the baking dish on a parchment lined baking just in case anything bubbles over and bake in the preheated oven for 55-65 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the filling is bubbly.
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Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.
Calories: 375kcal | Carbohydrates: 32g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 4g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 5mg | Sodium: 23mg | Potassium: 43mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 12g | Vitamin A: 3IU
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
