Why You’ll Love This Berry Crisp Recipe
Versatile and customizable. Use whatever berries you like, have on hand, or are in season (though you can always use frozen berries and enjoy it any time of year). Beautifully balanced flavor and texture with a juicy (but not too runny and certainly not too pasty) fruit filling and a perfectly crisp, perfectly sweetened topping. Just 15 minutes to prep! And it’s so easy too. There’s no pre-cooking the filling or chilling the topping; simply stir together the berries, make the streusel, and bake! Can be made several days in advance or frozen. It’s perfect for summer cookouts and picnics!
This berry crisp recipe is the summer version of everyone’s favorite fall dessert (apple crisp!). It’s packed with sweet, juicy berries and topped with a crisp, classic streusel topping. Personally, I love serving mine with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or even whipped cream, but it’s flavorful and satisfying enough to be enjoyed on its own, too.
Ingredients
This recipe uses fresh or frozen berries and just a few pantry staples. Here’s what you need!
Berries. I found that an even(ish) blend of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries works really well for berry crisp. If you don’t like a particular berry, feel free to leave it out, but know that it may alter the flavor. A crisp made with just blueberries and strawberries will be quite sweet, while raspberries tend to be more tart and can balance the sweetness. While they’re obviously not berries, you could also add in some peach slices, if you’d like! Lemon juice. A splash of fresh lemon juice helps enhances the flavors of the berries nicely, similar to how I make my blueberry pie filling. Granulated sugar. I stayed away from brown sugar for today’s recipe because the molasses detracted from the fresh berry flavor. Granulated sugar also yields the best, most crisp topping. Baking soda. While it comes together quickly and easily, the crisp topping for this recipe was actually a bit tricky to perfect, as it kept ending up too soft or too tough. Adding a bit of baking soda works well here for making the topping perfectly crisp so that it crumbles beneath your fork. It actually works here similarly to how it does in my peanut brittle; by making the mixture more porous it ultimately gives it a more pleasant texture that works well with the berries. Rolled oats. Quick oats can work instead of rolled, but you get a different texture that I don’t care for as much (same thing goes when you’re making my oatmeal cookies). I’d certainly use them if it’s all I had though. Unsalted butter. Make sure the butter is very cold and cut into small pieces to keep the crisp topping from being soggy. If you only have salted butter on hand, you can use that and skip the additional salt in the topping.
SAM’S TIP: If you want a little spice, feel free to add a pinch of cinnamon to the crisp topping. Personally, cinnamon has a more wintery/spice cake appeal to me; I prefer to keep things more summer-y and use neither cinnamon nor vanilla so the berry flavor can really shine! Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Berry Crisp
SAM’S TIP: If you’d like larger crumbs for your crisp topping, you can use your hands to pinch together larger clumps. Just make sure you don’t handle the streusel so much that you start to melt the butter, as this can lead to a softer topping. Enjoy! Let’s bake together! Subscribe to my newsletter to be notified of all the newest recipes, and find my free recipe tutorials on YouTube 💜
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