Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

 
It's rhubarb season in Minnesota - as it is a lot of places.   For Rhubarb Pie you can't beat the recipe I've posted on Rhubarb Pie - Great Recipes.  It's the first recipe on the page and I pretty much guarantee that you'll love it if you try it.

However, yesterday I found a recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp in May/June issue of Clean Eating magazine.  Looked good, I thought.  Generally speaking, I try to make a recipe exactly as written the first time.  Then I tweak it one way or another if I think it would improve the recipe.  Even though I hadn't prepared this before, I did tweak this a bit because I didn't have a couple of the ingredients.

Here's the recipe.  I've noted my revisions in italics.

INGREDIENTS:
2 stalks rhubarb, sliced (1-1/2 cups)  [3-4 stalks, actually needed]
18 to 21 medium strawberries, sliced (3 cups)
1 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 Tablespoons organic evaporated cane juice  [I used Sucanat ]
Juice of 1/2 lemon  [About a tablespoon of lime juice - didn't have a lemon]
3 Tablespoons spelt flour  [whole wheat flour - did not have spelt flour]

TOPPING:
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1/4 cup Sucanat
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 Tablespoons spelt flour  [whole wheat flour]
2 teaspoons ground flaxseed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon  [I eliminated this because I didn't want it too cinnamon-y]
[2 teaspoons wheat germ - added this just because I had it and it's nutty which I like]

INSTRUCTIONS:
One:  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Two:  In an 8 x 8-inch baking pan, combine rhubarb, strawberries, 1 tsp cinnamon, evaporated cane juice and lemon juice.  Sprinkle with 3 Tablsepoons flour and gently toss to coat.

Three:  Prepare topping in a medium bowl, add all topping ingredients.  Using a pastry blender or your hands, mix until well combined, then spread over fruit mixture in baking pan.

Four:  Place pan in oven and bake for 25 to 35 minutes, until topping is golden brown.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

And that's it!  The topping was quite brown and it was not easy to photograph...looked kinda blah.  I think it's because I used whole wheat flour.  And it's a lighter topping than a traditional crisp topping.  Had I used brown sugar and white flour and butter it would have been a more traditional topping.  It also wouldn't have been a "clean eating" recipe - ha!

But the flavor is wonderful.  Next time I make it I might double the topping ingredients because I do like a lot of crunch.  The rhubarb/strawberry mixture is sort of sweet-sour and that's also because Sucanat is not nearly as sugary as, well...sugar!  But we like that tartness so it was great.

It's a recipe that lends itself well to revisions...so give it a go and let me know what you think!

Now I'm off to plant the vegetable garden.  We're very late getting it in so we'll be harvesting late...darn it.  That's what we get for gallivanting around the country.