Crumble…Crisp…Cobbler…PIE!!!

Last week, I asked Cassie if she’d make me an apple pie. Sometimes, when I want something, I get obsessive about it and can’t stop thinking about it. I guess most people are like that.

Things got a little busy last week, but, this past Saturday, Cassie took a ride over to Indian Ladder Farms (where we had our wedding reception), and picked up a whole bunch of gala apples and apple cider. She made the most delicious apple pie spiked with apple cider, cinnamon, fresh vanilla bean, and, of course, sugar.

While we watched Iron Man 3 on Blu Ray, we each enjoyed warm slices of the delicious pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Apple pie a la mode brings us some great nostalgia, as most of you know, because I proposed to Cassie at The Cambridge Hotel where the combination of warm pie and ice cream was allegedly conceived.

But there’s a story that happened before the apples even entered the house.

As I was waking up on Saturday, I was thinking about making apple crumble, just in case Cassie wasn’t up to making pie. When I mentioned apple crumble to Cassie, her response was “do you mean apple crisp?” I became really confused. So I googled “Apple Crumble” and came upon a YouTube video of Gordon Ramsay making something very similar to what I was thinking about.

What I had in my head was baked apple slices topped with a mixture of oats, flour, butter, sugar, and spices. It turns out that’s called apple crisp. It’s also called apple crumble, only that’s not the common vernacular in the United States; I learned this from an edifying facebook conversation with a number of friends. My friend originally from across the pond, The Exile (Martin), gave responses that really helped me figure out the difference in language.

So, to review what I learned: apple crisp and apple crumble are the same thing.

To further complicate things, people were throwing cobbler into the mix. Being even more confused, I had to go to google for some clarification on that one. It turns out crisps (or crumbles) are variants of cobbler with oats added to the topping. So a classic cobbler usually has more of a biscuit-like topping.

Again, I learned something.

A big reason for the confusion to me is that I’ve been big on cake and pie. Cobblers or crisps or crumbles always seemed like inferior desserts, so I’ve never really bothered with them. But, since it’s officially fall in NY, I’m going to try Ramsay’s recipe for apple crumble and see if it comes out as good as it looks and sounds.