Pumpkin Apple Crisp {Budget Version with Aldi Ingredients}

Dear friends,

Last week, on www.virginiaknowles.blogspot.com, I posted a recipe from my sister-in-law Dana for  Super Easy Pumpkin Apple Crisp.

I noticed that two of the ingredients, pumpkin butter and cookie butter, were not standard pantry items, and that the cookie butter (Trader Joes' Speculoos) cost about $10 plus shipping for one jar. So...  Being the budget minded mother of 10 that I am, I decided to come up with a knock-off recipe using less expensive ingredients from our neighborhood Aldi store.  

Since I have arthritis, one of my teenage sons cut all of the apples with our apple corer/slicer.  I peeled them, and since I made a double batch, this kept me quite busy!  Everything else went really fast.

Apples:

• 8 apples 
• 1-1/2 cups white sugar

Peel the apples and cut into six segments each. Toss the apples with the sugar in a large bowl. 

Cookie Butter / Pumpkin Butter Mixture:

• 16 oz can pumpkin purée (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 14 graham crackers, finely crushed
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 Tbs. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. all spice
• 1 tsp. nutmeg
• 1 tsp. ginger
• 8 oz evaporated milk or vegetable oil (We tried it both ways.  They both worked fine, but the evaporated milk has less fat.)

Mix these in a sauce pan and heat until well-mixed.  Then pour into the apple mixture and stir until the apples are well coated.  Grease a 9"x13" baking dish and spoon the mixture in.

Crunchy Topping:

• 1/2 cup pecans crushed
• 7 oz.  granola

Mix the pecans and granola, and spread on top of the wet mixture.  Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until apples are fork tender.  Serve with whipped topping.

While you're here, I wanted to show you the pumpkin I bought at Aldi!  It's a big one (maybe 16" tall?), and since they received the shipment after Halloween, they marked them down to 25 cents -- for the whole pumpkin! 

Maybe in a few days, I'll carve it and use it for baking, but for now, it's adorning my front hallway.