Cranberry Persimmon Crisp

This cranberry persimmon crisp will tick all the cozy boxes this winter. This easy dessert features tart cranberries and sweet persimmons baked with a oat based crisp topping.

Have you ever had a persimmon? Don’t let their tomato-like appearance and texture turn you away, they’re a lovely sweet seasonal fruit. We’ve turned the ripe fruit into this simple cranberry persimmon crisp, a wonderful winter treat.

The crisp topping is made from a base of flour, rolled oats, and almond flour – it’s just sweet enough to counteract the natural tartness of the fruit, with a great texture. If you’re a fan of the more classic apple cranberry crisp, you’ll love this, too.

Persimmons and cranberries pair beautifully with a hint of orange and cinnamon in this comforting dessert. The colours are spectacular, and the warming spices make a nice counterpoint to the grey weather or snow that comes with winter.

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• Method
• Tips and Notes
• Substitutions
• Recipe

Ingredients

Method

Preheat the oven. In a large bowl combine the chopped persimmons, frozen cranberries, orange juice, and cane sugar. Stir to combine and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, almond flour, oats, cinnamon, cane sugar and salt. Using a pastry blender (or your hands) work and squeeze the softened coconut oil into the flour and oat mixture until you have a texture resembling moist sand with larger pea-sized crumbs.

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Pour the fruit mixture into a 10″ x 6.5″x 2.5″ square baking dish (or a 9″x2″ round baking dish) and spoon the oat crisp over top, evenly distributing it over the fruit.

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Bake in the preheated oven for 40-45 minutes, or until the top is slightly golden and the juices bubble up. Allow to cool before serving. Serve with ice cream, or go for coconut whipped cream to keep it vegan.

Tips and Notes

Fresh and frozen cranberries can be used interchangeably. To ensure no extra moisture content during baking, you can thaw the frozen fruit beforehand, but it won’t make a noticeable difference to the end result.

The topping will lose the crisp texture as it sits, so we recommend eating it the day of baking. It can be stored for 3-4 days and will re-crisp if heated in the oven.

On Persimmons

If your persimmons aren’t quite ripe, or you’re unsure, opt to peel them for this recipe. They have a skin very similar to apples so whether you choose to peel the skin or not is entirely optional. Use ripe persimmons, especially if you’re using the hachiya variety.

Here’s how to tell if your persimmons are ripe. They’ll be quite soft to the touch, turn a dark orange-red colour, and should be sweet. This is for hachiya, the longer, oblong variety. Fuyu persimmons can be eaten while still slightly firm (they’re the squat ones).

Persimmons, especially hachiya persimmons, often have tiny black dots throughout when ripe, almost like vanilla speckles. These are perfectly safe to eat and though the appearance may not be as nice, the flavour is the same.

Substitutions

Feel free to sub butter in for the coconut oil if you don’t need the crisp to be vegan.

If you want a more caramel flavour, use brown sugar or coconut sugar in the filling in place of cane sugar. You can also use honey in the filling.

Use lemon juice in place of orange juice in the filling if you don’t have it on hand.

For a more wholesome crisp, use whole wheat, whole wheat pastry, or spelt flour in the topping. You can sub oat flour (or a 1:1 GF blend) for a gluten free version.

More Winter Desserts

White Wine Bread Pudding
Cranberry Marzipan Stollen
Chocolate Chunk Ginger Cake
Cranberry Orange Loaf Cake
Chocolate Orange Wreath Bread

If you make this recipe, let us know by tagging @baked_theblog + #bakedtheblog on Instagram! We love to feel like we’re in the kitchen with you.