Today’s blueberry peach crisp is another one from the Ohio State Grange Cook Book, Eleventh Edition, 1949.
It started out as an apple crisp, but we didn’t have a box of apples getting over-ripe on the counter — we had peaches. And blueberries in the freezer. This is definitely one of our more successful experiments.
Ingredients
8-10 peaches
1½ cups blueberries
1 teaspoon cinnamon (or allspice, or pumpkin pie spice)
½ cup water
¾ cup flour
½ cup sugar
3 tablespoons butter
NOTE: If you want to try this one with apples, the recipe called for eight medium apples, sliced, and you had to grease the pan first. Otherwise it’s the same.
Directions
The fruit
You don’t have to peel the peaches, but I hate the feel of the fuzzy skin in my mouth. You can check out yesterday’s post to see an easy way how to peel peaches.
Once they’re peeled, cut them in half and pop out the pit.
Cut each half into wedges. Jenn did the cutting right in the 9×13 baking dish so she wouldn’t lose any of the juice.
Add the cinnamon — or allspice, or pumpkin pie spice.
The recipe called for cinnamon (which is what’s in the ingredient photo above). Jenn was about to add it, then thought it sounded boring. She looked in the spice cabinet for nutmeg instead. While we were looking, I found the allspice and suggested that. Then we both saw the pumpkin pie spice at the same time: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice. Bonus.
Add the blueberries, then pour the water around the edges so you don’t wash the spice off the peaches.
The topping
Combine the flour, sugar and butter. Mix together by hand until it is coarse and crumbly. Don’t overwork it, or the butter will melt and you’ll end up with dry dough instead of crumbs.
Sprinkle the crumbs evenly over the fruit.
Bake at 350° for about 30 minutes, until the topping just starts to get a little brown.
Allow to cool just a little, then scoop out with a big spoon so you can get the juice.
It would be a crime not to serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
And that’s it.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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9 Comments
I love your use of old cookbooks. I have cookbooks from both my grandmothers that I love to flip through for inspiration. The blueberry peach crisp looks delicious.
That’s the kind of post I can warm up to. Recipes, especially old ones, are so much better than advocacy. Looks delicious. I made a similar one with peaches and blackberries last week.
Betsy, just a note on the advocacy: I’d love to be able to walk into my neighborhood grocery store and get raw milk and local berries. No, actually I’d like to have a local farm market that I could go to year-round.
But I don’t have either of those, and I won’t as long as I’m the only one who wants them. I need more people looking for fresh, local food. So when I see articles that might convince people to look for fresh, local food, I share it.
Can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walkin’ in askin’ for local berries and walkin’ out? And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.
And that’s what it is
Besides pastas, this is the first thing I have ever cooked. Really. At 24, that’s kinda shameful but anyway…
I used blackberries instead of blueberries and probably opened the oven more often than I should have to check on it but I’m glad to say it turned out delicious.
I’m rather intimidated by cooking so thank you for helping me along in the right direction.
As the parent of a child injured in part by a failure of government health policies, I see the ongoing need for consumer advocacy in maintaining and improving the quality of our food supplies. To paraphrase the old axiom, we get the food quality that we deserve. It is earned by eternal vigilance.
Looks good.. I never considered this fruit combination before.I always use 2/3 cup each of brown sugar, flour and old fashioned oats in my crisp topping with a whole stick of butter. I’m trying your flour tortilla and brownie recipe tonight.
Cheers!!
i have just discovered this blog and i LOVE it. love love love love. food porn at its best.
i’m a college student, so i don’t have tons of money to go buy a lot of things for new recipes, so i love that the recipes are simple and fresh!
Do you have to thaw the blueberries first or can you use them frozen?
The ones in the pictures were frozen when I started. I was going a bit slower than normal because I was taking pictures, but they were still pretty cold when I mixed them in.
Make sure you have frozen whole berries, though, not mashed.
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[...] this sounds familiar, it’s the same way I started the blueberry peach crisp recipe. There’s actually a lesson there: You don’t always have to pick a recipe then go buy [...]