I absolutely love the combination of flour, brown sugar, and butter. I have been known to mix the three ingredients together and carry it around in a baggy to snack on. Okay, this was back in college, but anyways…The one thing I do know how to bake in an apple pie. I was taught by my mom when I was a wee thing and have been making it ever since. I always top with a flour, brown sugar, and butter crumble crust. While I love pie crust, I feel like the bottom and sides give plenty of crust to a pie.
Over the weekend I was laying around reading and craving the cooked apple goodness, floury brown sugary butteryness, and remembered what I used to do when one of these cravings hit. Cut up an apple, skip the more laborious crust and top with a simple crumble. It takes all of about 5 minutes to put together and another 20 in the toaster oven. There is absolutely no reason to not satisfy the craving!
You can use a little more flour or less butter, play around with the amounts, add more topping or less. This is the first time I have measured, and I’m sure I’ve tried all sorts of proportions: they all taste good 🙂
The recipe makes just a single serving. I used a creme brule dish, but any little baking dish would do.
1 small apple or 1/2 big apple (green apples works so well for this since they are tart, but I used a red apple since it was what we had and it worked just fine)
3 tablespoons flour
3 tablespoons brown sugar
Pinch salt
2 tablespoons butter (salted)
- Heat up your oven or toaster oven to 350 degrees.
- Slice your apple fairly thin taking out the seeded part, but leaving the skin, and lay into baking dish.
- Mix together the flour, brown sugar, and salt.
- Mix in the butter until there are little butter pieces throughout the flour & brown sugar mixture (I use my hands for this since it isn’t a normal crust and heating the butter a little won’t really hurt anything here).
- Sprinkle mixture over the apples.
- Bake for about 20 minutes or until the top is browned and apples tender.