Peach crisp is a must-make dessert for surviving summer on the AIP diet. It’s perfectly acceptable to turn on the oven in August when you’re preparing this crowd-pleaser—especially when topped with a generous scoop of AIP vanilla bean ice cream.
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🎥 Video
For years, I made crisps by intuition alone, using pantry staples like oats, maple syrup, and whatever seeds or nuts I had on hand. When I discovered that tigernut flour serves as the AIP-friendly alternative to oats, I couldn’t wait to try it in a crisp.
My spontaneous attempt at an AIP peach crisp turned out beautifully—though, in a fit of culinary inspiration, I neglected to write down the recipe.
Now, here I am in October, finally weighing and measuring ingredients and testing with some seriously underwhelming peaches. Even out of season, this peach crisp still tastes fantastic.
Crisp Hacks I Tested For You
Hack #1: Prebake the crisp topping.
Results: Yes. I found that the flavor improved when pre-baking the crisp. I believe this was due to more coconut oil melted and getting dispersed into the topping mixture.
Hack #2: Make sure there are a variety of small and larger (pea-sized) clumps when cutting the pastry.
Results: Meh. While this is generally good practice with butter, I actually think with coconut oil that the best practice is to aim to work the flour a bit more into the coconut oil, aiming for the wet sand look as opposed to chunks.
🔪 Instructions
Gather Pantry Ingredients and Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350℉.
Grease your baking dish with coconut oil. Set aside.
Baking Tip: You can use whatever bakeware you have on hand, but I like to aim for a deep layer of peaches so an 8x8 baking dish works great.
Honey & Spice Make Peaches Nice
In a mixing bowl, add the chopped peaches, honey, ½ teaspoon of the cinnamon, lemon juice, and the cassava flour. Stir to combine, then transfer to the prepared baking dish.
Make the Crisp Topping
1
In a separate mixing bowl, add the topping ingredients--coconut sugar, tigernut flour, cassava flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, salt, and packed ½ cup coconut oil (room temperature).
2
Use a pastry cutter to cut the coconut oil into the dry ingredient mixture, using a downward twisting motion. You want the coconut oil to combine well with the dry ingredients but a few clumps are ok.
Bake and Serve
Bake until you see a thick bubbling liquid around the peaches and the topping darkens in color and no longer appears dry.
Troubleshooting and Baking Tips: You get good flavor when you pre-bake the crisp topping because the coconut oil gets evenly distributed. Pictured above - the crisp on the top is cooked perfectly while the crisp on the bottom appears dry.
In the above example, you have the exact same mixture with the only difference being bake time. Notice that if you bake your crisp an extra 10 minutes, the oil has more time to blend into the pastry. Therefore, if your crisp appears dry, you can fix it by simply baking longer.
📋 Recipe
Peach Crisp {AIP, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free}
Ingredients
Spiced Peaches
- 6 peaches chopped (skin-on)
- 2 tablespoons honey (40 g)
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 ½ teaspoons lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons cassava flour
Crisp Topping
- 1 cup coconut sugar (170 g)
- ¾ cup tigernut flour (86 g)
- ¾ cup cassava flour (85 g)
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- pinch sea salt
- ½ cup coconut oil (85 g) room temperature (not melted), plus more for greasing
Instructions
Prepare
- Preheat the oven to 350℉. Grease an 8x8 baking dish with coconut oil. Set aside.
Make the spiced peaches
- In a mixing bowl, add the chopped peaches, honey, ½ teaspoon of the cinnamon, lemon juice, and the cassava flour. Stir to combine, then transfer to the prepared baking dish.
Make the crisp topping
- In a separate mixing bowl, add the topping ingredients--coconut sugar, tigernut flour, cassava flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, salt, and packed ½ cup coconut oil (room temperature).
- Use a pastry cutter to cut the coconut oil into the dry ingredient mixture, using a downward twisting motion, until the mixture resembles wet sand with some pea-sized crumbs. Note: You can use two forks or your hands to crumble, just be sure to leave some pea-sized clumps in the mixture.
Bake
- Evenly spread the topping over the peaches in the baking dish. Bake until you see a thick bubbling liquid around the peaches and the topping darkens in color and no longer appears dry, approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Serve
- Serve warm with vanilla bean ice cream or whipped vanilla bean coconut cream.
Notes
Test Notes
- 6 medium peaches were used and weighed 1 pound 12.4 ounces (with pit). It's ok to use 6 large peaches (or even 8 medium peaches) since I had quite a bit of pastry to work with and wished I had more peaches.
- Note that all ovens bake differently, so you should rely on my description of doneness more than the bake time.
- I tossed my peaches in cassava flour because I like the way cassava thickens the juices at the bottom. If you forget this step, the peaches will still taste good but may be a bit watery.
- I pre-baked the crisp topping for 10 minutes and slightly preferred the flavor of that method but I'll leave that decision up to you since it involves 1 extra step.
Make-Ahead Directions:
- Bake as directed. After the crisp cools, cover and refrigerate until the next day. When you are ready to reheat, set it out at room temperature for 20 minutes, then bake at 350℉ until hot, about 30 minutes.
- I haven't tested assembling or freezing ahead, but I believe this recipe would turn out just fine. Just remember to extend the bake time if starting with a cold/frozen crisp.
Nutrition
Frequently Asked Questions
What can I add if I want a crunchy texture?
If you happen to be reintroducing nuts or seeds, go ahead and try adding a handful of pumpkin seeds or some chopped pecans, if you'd like.
What can I substitute for the coconut oil?
Palm oil, butter, or ghee.
How do I make this crisp with a different fruit?
For anything juicy (berries, stone fruit), follow the recipe and aim for about 2 pounds of fresh fruit. If using apples, you do not need to toss them with the cassava flour.
What if I want to use frozen fruit?
You can use the fruit frozen but just increase the cassava flour slightly (add an extra 1 tablespoon) since frozen fruit tend to release more liquid.
What flour works as a substitute for tigernut flour?
Instead of tigernut flour, replace 1:1 with old fashioned oats, if tolerated.
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