The Best Type Of Apple To Use For Apple Crisp

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What do December kitchens smell like to you? For some, it's warm holiday spices. Others, it's butter and sugar meeting heat. But for lots and lots of people, it's the sweet and fruity smell of apple crisp baking. If a classic apple crisp is on your holiday baking agenda, there's a secret you must know before getting down to baking: the choice of apples can make or break these fruity treats. For the best results possible, you'll need the help of Honeycrisp apples.

This Minnesotan cultivar is prized for its crisp texture and remarkable ability to stay firm when baked — the complete opposite of mealy apples like Gala or McIntosh, which would turn into mush in the oven. But, the real magic's in the flavor department: Honeycrisp strikes the perfect balance between sweet and tart, keeping the dessert lively throughout. As the apple bakes, the juices concentrate and caramelize — making your batch of already-delicious crisp even better.

Honeycrisp is super popular, and you can find it just about everywhere — whether you get your groceries on Amazon or at Walmart – and they're typically available year-round. However, because they're quite tricky to grow, Honeycrisp apples can come with some sticker shock. If that's an issue, no worries — there are plenty of other, less expensive, apple varieties that'll also work in your holiday apple crisp.

Golden Delicious is one apple variety that gets overlooked a lot when it comes to baking; usually because people bite into them raw and find the texture disappointing. Throw them into a hot oven with sugar and spices, though, and suddenly the soft, yielding flesh dissolves into a jam-like consistency. Sure, it's nothing like Honeycrisp's firm bite, but what you have in return is an intensely sweet filling that's almost sauce-like — the sort of hyper-indulgent texture that makes you reach for a spoon and forget about everything else. Jonagold apples, on the other hand, bring the juice — so much so that it made our taste tester's list of the top apples for juicing – and that deep apple-forward flavor gets amplified during baking, while the fruit releases enough liquid to create a moister filling that many people absolutely swear by for their apple crisp recipes.

A mixed-variety approach works, too — and it's great if you want complexity in the batch. Mix a sweet and soft variety like Golden or Red Delicious with a tart and firm one like Granny Smith, and you'll have a crisp that's memorable for everyone who has had a taste. Amazing dessert aside, we guarantee Jaime Bachtell-Shelbert's classic apple crisp recipe would be a great conversation starter at the dinner table.