Mommy and Me Butternut Apple Crisp

Lately, my life is all about sharing. I share just about everything with my baby boy: my body, my bed, every waking moment…but I wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂

One of my favorite things to share with him is food. As a family, we grow it together, we go to farms to buy it together (Ok, so we don’t exactly cook it together, but that’s OK) and, now that he’s 10 months old, we can eat some of it together, too!

Eating the same foods also makes it easier to multitask with meal preparation with what I like to call “Mommy and Me” recipes (and that’s a good thing, because spare time is a seriously hot commodity around here, lately, and I do not want to give in to the temptation of more prepared foods.)

Today’s Mommy and Me was inspired by our butternut squash crop and the hint of fall that’s crept into the Central PA air…

Apple crisp is an autumn classic, so I thought, Why not put two fall favorites together and put an apple crisp inside a butternut!?

I knew what I wanted to make, but I did a little looking around the blogosphere anyway. I found inspiration in a post by The Hungry Housewife. (Go ahead and check out the recipe–you won’t be sorry! )

I changed the recipe a bit to suit our tastes (a little less sugar) and what I had on hand (Oops…no pumpkin pie spice.) 

Here are the my steps (I’m not much of a measurer, so they aren’t overly specific):

• Cut butternut squash in half and scoop out seeds.
• Chop apple (I used 5 small organic Granny Smith apples) and mix with cinnamon to taste. 

• Fill hollow of squash with apples, then top the rest of squash with any remaining apples. (I chose to cover the whole squash so I could slice it and each piece would have a nice, crisp topping.) Drizzle with a touch of pure maple syrup.
• In a small bowl, cut together 1/2 stick softened butter and 1/2 cup flour until mixture forms a coarse crumble. Mix in 1 1/2 T sugar, 3 T old fashioned rolled oats, cinnamon and nutmeg to taste. 
• Mound topping over apple mixture, covering as much of squash as possible. Top with toasted pecans.

• Bake at 375 degrees until soft when pierced with a knife. If topping starts to brown too quickly, tent with aluminum foil. 
• Serve squash while warm with an extra drizzle of pure maple syrup.

Since this was a huge squash, I decided to make one half for me and Daddy, and use the other half to make a roasted butternut squash and cinnamon apple puree for baby. (I just topped one half of the squash with apples and cinnamon and roasted both halves together. No butter or sugar for baby! You could add soaked oats, however, if you wanted to make it a little heartier.)

Once cooked, I just gave it a quick buzz in the food processor with enough water to thin.

The crisp itself was a little more decadent than I had intended (I got a little out of control with the topping, but I felt good about every ingredient, so I didn’t sweat it too much.) There was very little added sugar and only a little drizzle of maple syrup, and most of the sweetness came from the squash itself. This recipe is definitely going into the ‘Favorites’ file! A little sticky and syrupy on top with pillowy soft butternut underneath, served with a fresh pot of Canterbury Naturals Organic Split Pea Soup – it was a heavenly way to fill the house with the first aromas of fall!

One squash yielded enough for us to have it again tomorrow night (and ten servings of baby food!) I’ve been gardening most of my life, and I still find it pretty darned amazing that we can actually grow food ourselves. I just think it’s really cool, and  I probably always will. And, judging by the response I got at dinner this evening, someone else thinks it’s pretty neat, too…