AIP apple crumble - oat-free, grain-free, built on a three-flour blend

There are dishes that carry a whole season inside them, and apple crumble is one. If a holiday table or a cold week arrives partway through your elimination phase, this is the dessert that still gets to sit on it: golden, spiced, soft under the fork.

The topping is a blend of 3 flours, cassava, tigernut, and coconut, standing in for the oats and wheat of a usual crumble, with melted palm shortening and a little applesauce doing the work butter would normally do. Underneath, the apples cook down plain and honest: a little water, lemon, cinnamon, the kind of warmth that needs nothing added to feel like enough.

Bake it until the top is golden and the kitchen smells like it. Serve it warm, in a real bowl, and let this be the proof that the protocol still gets to include the thing everyone else is eating, just built a different way.

Ingredients

Fruit layer:

• 2 lb apples (about 6 to 7, peeled and sliced; use soft baking apples such as Macintosh or Pink Lady, not Granny Smith)
• 3/4 cup warm water
• Juice of 1 lemon (or 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar)
• 2 tsp alcohol-free vanilla (swapped from vanilla extract for AIP; or omit)
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Topping:

• 3/4 cup cassava flour
• 3/4 cup tigernut flour
• 1/3 cup coconut flour
• 1/2 cup date sugar (or coconut sugar)
• 1/2 cup melted palm shortening (or coconut oil)
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

Method

Heat the oven to 350 F.

Toss the sliced apples with the warm water, lemon juice, alcohol-free vanilla, and cinnamon. Spread them evenly in an 8x11 baking dish.

In a separate bowl, combine the cassava flour, tigernut flour, coconut flour, and date sugar. Work in the melted shortening and the applesauce until you have a moist, crumbly dough.

Scatter the topping evenly over the fruit. Bake 30 to 40 minutes, until the apples have softened and the top is golden.

Serve warm. It keeps about 5 days refrigerated and freezes well, so you can bake it a day or two ahead of a gathering. Arrowroot can stand in for some of the cassava or tigernut flour if that is what you have.

*Adapted from asquirrelinthekitchen.com*