Gluten Free, Vegan Apple Crisp

We recently moved to Asheville, NC and I must say- one of my most favorite things about this city is the Farmers Markets!  We have one that we can walk to and their selection of fresh apples were immediately purchased to make our favorite gluten-free, vegan treat. 

This is an old recipe that we have easily made gf/df/all the frees- and my kids even love to help make it since it’s such an easy recipe ?  My favorite kind of apples to make this with are Honey Crisp or Pink Ladies!

Also, cinnamon seems to be a spice that loses it’s “cinnamon-ey-ness” quickly in the cupboard, so the addition of non-GMO Cinnamon Bark Vitality Oil from Young Living gives it tons of extra cinnamon-ey flavor!

INGREDIENTS:

  1. 6-8 apples, peeled, and diced (see picture below for the perfect size!)
  2. 1/2 cup water
  3. 1 tsp cinnamon (can also use 2 tsp cinnamon if not using the oil below)
  4. 5 drops cinnamon bark vitality oil (can use 8-9 drops and no ground cinnamon also!)
  5. 1 1/2 cups gluten free flour (King Arthur Brand is my favorite GF blend!)
  6. 1 cup organic cane sugar
  7. 6 large, rounded tablespoons of vegan butter (we use Earth Balance)

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

  1. Cut the apples and place in a 9 x 13 glass pan.
  2. Mix the water, cinnamon, and cinnamon vitality oil and pour over the apples in the pan evenly.
  3. In a large bowl, whisk the flour and the sugar together and use a pastry cutter to cut in the butter.  (if you do not have a pastry blender, you can use a fork)
  4. Cut the butter in until it resembles a crumbly mixture with small pea-sized crumbles like below- and pour over the apples in the pan.
  5.   Bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes until the apple mixture is bubbly and the topping is crisp!

Enjoy it with some dairy-free vanilla ice cream or coco-whip on top!

Why Oils? (It might not be what you think!)

Hi, I’m Eryn, married to David, and we are adoptive parents.  In 2014, a couple years into parenting we still were overwhelmed (as most parents are ? and had a difficult time connecting with one of our children.  Supporting her needs took more patience and skills than I was equipped with and we were getting better.  Things were getting better, yet I still often felt distant from her.

That November 2014, I went to an essential oils class and got some samples of Lavender and Myrrh from a friend.  Later that same night, my daughter got sick for the first time since we brought her home with us.  She was hardly ever even with the sniffles, but she was really down that night.  I didn’t know what to do because I often felt out of my element with her, but this night I also hadn’t ever seen her feel this bad physically.  So I did some research and rubbed the oil samples I got over her spine and put some on me too.  Now, up until this point she wouldn’t really love snuggling or staying in my lap.  She was often wanting her space and wanting to be mobile.  I got to rock my other kids, but she wasn’t really into that kind of bonding time.

As soon as I rubbed the Lavender and Myhrr on her though, she crawled into my lap and slept, snuggled, settled in with me and stayed with me through the night so I could keep an eye on her.   It was really miraculous for our relationship!  I wept because I had been longing to hold her for so long.

I knew at that point that it didn’t matter if these little EO bottles did anything else, I was getting them just for my relationship with my daughter!  Spoiler- they helped with other things too ?  It was such a TURNING POINT for our family.

At that point I was all in!

I researched the heck out of everything I could and then I asked my super smart husband a billion questions.  He even read textbooks on essential oils (he’s a chemist and a chiropractor) and told me all about that.  This cascaded into a thousand different things that helped my family in ways I didn’t even know were possible.

We used oils more….our family healed emotionally.

We started using more green-cleaning items in our home…things got better for our kids behavior.

We started a business with Young Living because we loved sharing….we now are a stay at home family and get to make up for time we lost before we adopted.

We keep finding new things (still 4 years later!) that we love about Young Living.  If you want to start this journey and see what it will mean for your family- it might be different or similar to my story- now is the time, friend!