Vegan MoFo 2015: Something Blue

10 Something blue.

Um… well. Blue food calls to mind those gross candies that are radioactively blue and leave your tongue, teeth, and lips disturbingly chilly-hued.

Here’s me in early 2000 sporting blue-lollipop-stained teeth:

and lips:

Yeah. I’ve outgrown those lollies. (And I’ve also graduated from pale blue flannel granny gowns to other kinds of sleepwear.)

But I’ll never outgrow blueberries. One of my favourite recipes calling for blueberries is Baked Oatmeal, and I already mentioned blueberry muffins in my childhood meal post the other day. I have also been known to eat astounding amounts of fresh blueberries, because, well, YUM.

But few things top a good crisp or pie made with blueberries.

Page 260 of my 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook is well-used, well-marked, well-stained. It’s the page that has THE best apple crisp recipe, like, ever.

This is my criterion for a crisp: The fruit needs to be unsweetened and un-spiced, and stand on its own. The topping needs to be the magic layer where the sweet spiciness happens, and there has to be plenty of said topping. So I always double – or at least one-point-five – the crisp part of the recipe.

Here’s my veganised, already-doubled crisp topping based on the Betty Crocker cookbook.

In a bowl, combine:
2/3 c brown sugar
1 c all-purpose flour
1 c rolled oats
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg

Then add:
2/3 c vegan margarine of choice (I use Nucoa)

Using your fingers, crumble the dry ingredients with the margarine until nice and crumbly and evenly mixed.

Heat your oven to 375 and lightly spray a 13×9 pan. Here are the proportions for my favourite crisps.

Blueberry (blackberry, raspberry, other-berry, cherry): 3 cups of fresh or frozen blueberries, sprinkled with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (omit lemon juice with anything other than blueberries)
Apple (pear, nectarine, peach, plum, etc): 4 cups sliced tart fresh apples, arranged in pan neatly

Sprinkle the crumb topping evenly over the fruit and bake for about 30 minutes. The fruit should be bubbling and the crisp should be golden brown. Serve warm with cold nut-or-soy milk. Mmm.

[Footnote: YES, it’s lame that I didn’t, like, MAKE a blueberry crisp to take a photo of for this post, but I don’t HAVE any blueberries at the moment besides dried ones, and I’m lazy, so. Yeah.]