Gingery Blueberry Peach Crisp

It's been so wonderful since it finally decided to turn into summer in Vancouver lately that I've been everywhere except the internet. Summers here really are spectacular, but some years we only get about 6 weeks to enjoy it. It's one of those things where you try and cram in as much summer fun as you can since it's going to turn back into grey skies soon.

Speaking of cramming in as much as you can, check out how many blueberries I crammed into this crisp! I'm out of control at the farmer's market lately. I really need an intervention or something. We moved this past spring and our new place is only about a block and a half from one of the local farmer's markets. That is super awesome and something that gets me excited to get up early on a Saturday morning but it's sort of like being a kid in a candy store for me. 

There are blueberries everywhere right now. Well, not literally everywhere, it's not like there are blueberries rolling down the sidewalks or anything. We have so many great farms around BC that grow berries that it's so easy to get inexpensive, local and organic berries right now. I might turn into a blueberry soon, actually, I've been eating them so often. I bought a huge basket of them last week, planning to make a pie. Then I didn't feel like making a pie anymore and I realized I hadn't made a crisp in quite a while. I had a few peaches hanging around, too so I decided to add them in with the blueberries. The result was amazing. Okay, so having the oven on when it already felt like a million degrees inside my apartment wasn't so great but it was all worth it.

If you make this, you can really use any fruit you want. Any kind of berry, peaches, apricots, apples, pears or even plums would be great for this. Mix it up if you want. It's hard to go wrong. If you don't want to make as much as I did, just use a little less fruit and use a smaller, square pan or a pie dish. I actually meant to make this just a little square's worth of crisp, but I had way more blueberries and peaches than I realized. Usually I'll dump all of my raw fruit into the pan I want to bake it in and judge how full the pan is. You want a little bit of room at the top so the juices don't bubble over onto the oven bottom when you're cooking. Depending on how much of the yummy crisp topping you like, you can really just use the same amount no matter which size dish you're using.

Make sure to taste a bit of your fruit before you add the sugar for this recipe. Sometimes I skip the sugar altogether if my fruit is sweet enough on its own. I'll usually add about 1/4 cup of sugar for fruit that's sweet and ripe and up to 1/2 cup if it's still not quite as sweet as I wish it was.

I think the crisp was awesome as it was, but if I had some crystalized ginger I would have chopped some up and added it in when I added the pecans to give things a bit more zip. Some freshly grated ginger would have also been fantastic to add in with the fruit.

Now go get some fresh summer fruit and make a crisp! Don't forget to grab some vanilla ice cream to spoon on top. I especially like the vanilla bean flavored coconut milk ice cream that Soy Delicious makes. 

Gingery Blueberry Peach Crisp

4 large or 6 small peaches, chopped

1 large basket of blueberries or 3-5 small ones

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

pinch of salt

6 tablespoons non-hydrogenated margarine like Earth Balance, chopped into pieces

1/3 cup rolled oats

1/4 cup chopped pecans

Preheat your oven to 375 F. 

Gently stir your fruit together in a bowl until it seems like it's a pretty even mixture of the different fruits. Add in the sugar, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg and stir gently again until things are mixed up uniformly. If you care about this sort of thing, you can also add 1/4 cup flour to thicken the fruit juices. I do that sometimes, but this time I didn't bother. 

Put your fruit mixture in your pan and set it aside while you make the crisp topping.

Stir together the flour, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt in a bowl until everything is combined evenly. Cut in the Earth Balance with a pastry blender, two table knives or a fork. (You can also freeze the Earth Balance and grate it in which is kind of a cool way to do it if you don't have a pastry blender.) Stir in the oats and pecans. Give everything one last stir to make sure you've incorporated everything things are mixed well. 

Dump the topping on top of your fruit in the pan and spread it around until it's covering most of the fruit. You can use your hand or a spoon or whatever. You just want to make sure every bite has some of the awesome crisp topping in it. 

Put the pan in the oven and bake for 45 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and let the crisp cool for at least 10 minutes before you start diving into it. 

The End of Brownie Fail

There are two things that I've never been able to make successfully; brownies and pancakes.  The pancakes usually taste okay, but they look like a crazy person made them, so I don't really sweat that one.  No matter how recipe I use, no matter how hard I try, I end up with brownie fail.  Yes, before you ask, I've tried everything.  I've used glass pans, metal pans, turned the oven up, turned the oven down, used less liquid, used more liquid, baked them for shorter or longer.  You might wonder why I keep trying when I know how these things are going to turn out.  I don't know, I just always hope that one day things will be different. 

Veganomicon saved brownies.  Seriously.  I've made these awesome brownies a bunch of times and they always come out fantastic. At first I was skeptical of blueberries in a brownie.  I have no idea why, but I made these with the blueberries the first time.  The cool thing about that is that you can't immediately recognize what fruit is in the brownie.  You just notice how unbelievably moist it is.  The cool thing about using jam as part of the sweetener is that the brownie doesn't taste like plain sugar.  Some people might like that, but I'm one of those people that tend to scrape frosting off of cupcakes leaving only a tiny bit.  I actually had a coworker once that would take my discarded frosting and eat it by itself.  That's kind of hilarious.

Go make these awesome fruity brownies.  I've tried using blueberries, raspberries and cherries so far.  All of them have turned out wonderful.  I even did a blueberry/raspberry mixture once when I had some leftover berries of each in the fridge.  Yum!  I think I might try using blackberries or even loganberries when they're in season next.  Yum!

One thing to keep in mind when making brownies - I have learned that using a metal pan versus a glass pan typically works out better.  If you're having epic brownie fail like I was, you might try making these in one of those pans.  You won't be sorry, I promise.