On Crisps

Featuring a recipe for what really should be called a cobbler.

Welcome to our second paid-subscriber only situation! Please know that there is a hard stop ahead, which I know can be annoying, but it’s either this or endless pop-up ads on a website, so here we are.

Though we keep having these random 60 degree days here in Chicago, it is, in fact, basically summer. Memorial Day has come and gone and every farmers’ market I know of is in full swing. (PS — my tips and tricks for making the most of each farmers’ market are coming soon!) The time for fresh fruit and vegetables is upon us.

Growing up, Memorial Day was not just an occasion to start wearing white pants again (!) but to make a peach crisp using the last bag of frozen peaches from my mom’s herculean preservation efforts. Something about this time of year signaled that it was safe to dig into those reserves to make the most delicious dessert in my little family cookbook.

It’s clear that the apple did not fall far from the tree, because this is usually the time of year when I’m able to convince the tiny hoarder voice inside my head that it’s okay to use that last jar of canned tomatoes that I’ve been saving for a special occasion. After all, there is no occasion more special than the dawn of another summer that will be full of tomatoes in its own right.

The peach crisp recipe in question is a winner for literally any audience. I’ve made this recipe about four times in the last two months, once for a vegan friend who prefers desserts of the distinctly less sweet variety, once for a family member who is eliminating gluten from her diet, once without dairy, eggs, OR gluten to see if I could do it, and once earlier today, for no reason other than I messed up a recipe for rhubarb preserves and needed a way to fix my mistake.

Use frozen fruit, chunky jam, or fresh-from-the-market produce. Eat it with ice cream, warm from the oven, and have it for breakfast the next morning. Call it a crisp, even though the amount of delicious, salty-sweet dough on top of your fruit-of-choice makes it a cobbler by almost any definition. This is my favorite dessert, so that makes me right.

If it’s not just a little bit gloopy, it’s not right.