Gluten Free Slow Cooker Apple Crisp

Gluten Free Slow Cooker Apple Crisp

After seeing Mary at Bunny's Warm Oven recently post her Crock Pot Apple Crisp, I NEEDED to make it gluten free so I could have some!  It wasn’t that hard to recreate with gluten free oats and a little gluten free flour.  I changed up a few other things and this made for a delicious treat for days.  I might have even had some for breakfast one day. ; )

There’s nothing quite like the fall aroma of baking apples with cinnamon and nutmeg!  I love that it was slow cooked, which made the smell go on longer.  The apples cooked perfectly to my liking, not too crisp and not too mushy.  Whether you make this with Mary’s version or my gluten free version, you will love it.  Of course all crisps are great with vanilla ice cream, but for me, it was perfect on its own and I didn’t need to make sure I had some ice cream I could eat.

Gluten Free Slow Cooker Apple Crisp, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

Apple filling:

5-6 large apples, or 8 small-medium sized (I used 5 large organic Fuji apples), peeled, cored and cut into chunks 

1/4 cup organic coconut palm sugar

2 tablespoons raw honey

1 tablespoon non-GMO cornstarch

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Crisp topping:

1 cup gluten free flour blend

1 cup gluten free old fashioned oats

1/3 cup organic light brown cane sugar, lightly packed

1/3 cup organic coconut palm sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

pinch of salt

1/3 cup coconut oil, chilled for a few minutes if it’s not solid

3/4 cup chopped pecans

Put the cut apples in the bowl of a slow cooker.  Add the sugar, honey, cornstarch, spices, lemon juice and vanilla and stir to combine. 

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, oats, sugars, spices and salt.  Work the coconut oil into the mixture, kneading it together with your fingers until it is all well combined.  Stir in the pecans.  Sprinkle the topping mixture evenly over the apples.  With the lid on the slow cooker, cook on high for 2 hours.  Remove the lid and cook for another hour.  Serve warm.  Or cold for breakfast the next day! ; )

So good, even right out of the slow cooker!

Molten Chocolate Lava Crock Pot Cake—Secret Recipe Club

Molten Chocolate Lava Crock Pot Cake

It’s time for Secret Recipe Club!  This is a date each month that I really look forward to but I have to say I can’t believe how fast the months fly by when it seems like just yesterday it was time for Secret Recipe Club from the last time.  Can anyone else believe it’s September?  I swear it was just Christmastime.  At any rate, here we are and I’ve certainly got another delicious treat to share with you that I picked from the hundreds of recipes I was faced with choosing from at the blog I had this month. 

It’s no surprise that I’m always drawn to the word chocolate.  And when I saw molten lava along with it, this was a must-make recipe.  The blog I got to pick from this month is Katie’s blog, This Chick Cooks.  I feel it somewhat of a disservice to have chosen this cake from Katie’s blog, since she is all about eating whole foods and cutting white flour and white sugar out of her diet.  Then why would this recipe be on her blog?  Because she used to make, eat, and blog things like this, but now doesn’t. 

I seriously started making a list of things from her blog that I wanted to make not long after getting this assignment.  Check some of these out--Chocolate Coconut Milk Ice Cream—I still plan to make this soon, just couldn’t remember to get coconut milk every time I was at a store.  I love oatmeal for breakfast, so I’m drawn to this post for 40 Fun Oatmeal Toppings.  Hot Fudge Brownie Larabars—I would love those.  Healthier Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies—I plan to make these, too.  I love making “treats” that have a healthier twist but are still a treat.  All the things I looked at when I first got the assignment seemed to end up being things that I needed something from the store in order to make them.  Then, before I knew it, our Group A leader, Jane, sent a little reminder last week to make sure we had our recipe and post ready and I freaked out a little when I realized I hadn’t done anything yet—just dreamed of all the goodness on Katie’s blog.  Where or where did August go?

I did another quick search of her Recipe Index—and that’s when I saw the words Molten Chocolate Lava!  After looking at the recipe, I saw that I had everything to make it and decided to get to work in time for the family treat that night. 

The Molten Chocolate Lava Crock Pot Cake (also known as Mud Cake or Pudding Cake) could not have been more simple to make.  Katie found the recipe for it on the Family Fun website.  Guess what—I didn’t change anything from the recipe Katie has on her blog.  I did exactly what it said.  This is rare for me.  I deserve a gold sticker or something. ;)  The recipe said to cook the cake in the Crockpot on high for 1-2 hours.  I cooked mine for 1 hour and 40 minutes. 

Definitely delicious on its own, with a deep, dark chocolate flavor from using Dutch-processed, dark cocoa, the cake was just screaming for some ice cream.  I mean, doesn’t it just look so much happier now?  Still, that seemed a little “plain”.  Katie mentioned how good this would be with some fresh berries on the side.  Wish I would have had some because I totally agree with that.

We ended up with sprinkles on ours here because my boys think everything has to have sprinkles.

Ahhh, definitely looking better now with the little pop of color.  I think second only to sprinkles, the boys all love maraschino cherries, so it only seemed appropriate to put a cherry on top of this cake.  Parker even likes them so much that lately when they get to have ice cream for a snack, Parker begs and pleads to just have a bowl full of the cherries with no ice cream.  I think I’ve only let him have three of them so far.  His birthday is coming this week.  Somebody is probably going to get his own jar of cherries as one of his gifts.  Silly kid.  Last year he got his own bottle of A-1 Steak Sauce, he could drink that stuff.

I’ll definitely be back to Katie’s blog, This Chick Cooks, for more recipe inspiration soon!  Go check it out if you have never been there!

Can’t wait to see what the rest of Group A made this month!