Apple Crisp

I love apple crisp because it's the lazy baker's apple pie. Although I guess that with the advent of refrigerated Pillsbury pie crust apple pie has become pretty lazy too. Anyway, the thing that I love about apple crisp is the delicious salty-sweet crumbled topping. I have a tough time not eating a bunch of it before it's even baked actually...surprise surprise!

When I was a kid, my mom used to make this quite a bit during the fall. She'd make it in the afternoon, so I'd have some when I came home from school, and then we'd all eat some for dessert after dinner. If she put it into a 9x13 pan, there would usually be about half left. By the next afternoon, though, it would almost always be gone...mom couldn't stay away from it! Mom thinks that her mom, my Grandma Hill, cut this recipe out of a newspaper about 60 years ago. Well believe me...what was good 60 years ago is still good now.

APPLE CRISP
from Grandma Hill

Ingredients:

6 medium peeled and sliced apples (peeled is important...I forgot that once and this didn't turn out so well)
1/3-1/2 C sugar (to taste really)
1 t cinnamon
1 C water
6 T shortening (you can do 3 T butter, 3 T shortening if shortening totally disgusts you)
1/2 C packed brown sugar
1 C flour
1 t baking powder
smidge salt

Directions:

Simmer the apples, sugar, cinnamon, and water for 7-10 minutes. Mix the shortening, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt until crumbly. Pour apples into deep baking dish (I've used several different sizes...just as a rule, though, the smaller the dish the deeper it needs to be) and cover with crumbled mixture. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes, until the apples are soft and the mixture underneath the crust is brown.