Made with rolled oats + oat flour, this healthy berry crisp is the perfect summertime dessert. Ready in under an hour, this crisp is an easy alternative to a traditional fruit pie. It’s refined sugar-free, dairy-free + is bursting with sweet freshness!
Nothing in the world screams summer quite like fresh berries. Honestly, if this healthy berry crisp had a speech bubble, it would be yelling, “I TASTE LIKE SWEET SUMMER”.
When the warmer weather rolls around, I really have to control myself or I’d power through $20 worth of fresh berries in one sitting. They really are just the best! If you’re a mixed berry lover, you may have tried my Mixed Berry Baked Oatmeal, which is sort of a breakfast version of this dessert. (To be honest, I’d eat baked oatmeal for dessert and healthy berry crisp for breakfast too, so I don’t descriminate, ha!)
I love the tang + the natural sweetness of fresh berries. They honestly bring back all of the sweet memories of being a little kid with juice running down your elbows from picking + eating from my parents or grandparent’s gardens.
This Healthy Berry Crisp is full of all of the nostalgia of childhood summetime. It’s packed with juicy, fresh berries and topped with a crispy, lightly sweet, golden crumble topping. It will honestly remind you of a fresh berry pie…just with a lot less work.
Dare I say it – this may be my fave summertime treat!? It is a MUST for family dinner’s outside.
What’s the difference between a berry crisp and berry cobbler?
Honestly, if you had asked me before I wrote this what the difference between a crisp + a cobbler was, I’m not sure I could have told you. I feel like lots of people use them interchangabley, but they really are different!
Even though they both some sort of baked berries (or apples) with a crunchy/cumbly topping, the TOPPING is what helps us to tell them apart.
A cobbler is generally made with more of a dough like topping. It’s much wetter than a crisp. So, imagine biscuit dough or cake batter poured over the top. It’s spooned over the fruit instead of sprinkled + it spreads out to cover the top of the cobbler as it bakes. The name “cobbler” comes from the appearance of the dessert, sort of like cobble stone streets! Cool, right?!
A crisp, however, is made up of a flour, usually oats, a fat + sweetner, which is what gives it the crispy topping. In my opinion, they’re all delicious – no matter which version you choose!
Why is this a HEALTHY berry crisp?
While I hate to label foods as healthy or unhealthy, there are certain ingredients which tend to cause issues for people – things like gluten, dairy + sugar. I’m not sure if it’s my own tummy issues (I’m looking at you, endometriosis) that cause me to be extra sensitive to dietary concerns, but I am! So, I wanted to make a recipe that uses a few easy swaps for the traditional flour, butter, sugar formula for a crisp to make it more readily accessible to all diets.
The easy switches in this recipe won’t be noticeable in the final taste, but they will up the nutrient levels of this healthy berry crisp. The finished dessert is honestly still so delicious that no one will ever know it’s healthy enough to eat for breakfast! I know there are some disappointing healthy desserts out there, but this isn’t one of them!
This healthy berry crisp uses:
- Gluten-Free Oats: We use the oats to make homemade oat flour, but also whole oats for texture. This keeps the flour gluten-free, while also upping the fiber content + keeping it low cost!
- Coconut Sugar: I decided to use coconut sugar here as a natural alternative to white sugar. It’s unrefined and is believed to cause less of a blood glucose spike.
- Ghee or Coconut Oil: I swapped the butter in a traditional crisp for a non-dairy version to help anyone with dairy allergies! Feel free to use regular butter if it doesn’t bother you.
The berries mean that you’re getting all of the wonderful fresh nutrients in there too, which is a win. This recipe is also totally vegan if you use coconut oil as your fat!
How to make health berry crisp
This healthy berry crisp is incredibly easy to make. From beginning to plate, it takes about an hour, but that’s mostly hands off time!
To start, prepare the berries. You really can use any mix of fresh or frozen berries that you like – no need to even thaw them. I personally love to use a mix of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries for the perfect mix of tart + sweet, but use whatever you have! Blackberries or cherries would be delish too.
Next, mix the berries with the arrowroot starch, lemon juice and vanilla. This lemon juice + vanilla really bring out the flavours of the berries and the arrowroot starch helps to gel the juices that come out of the berries, which is what we want. Once it’s mixed up, go ahead and pour the berries into a baking dish.
Making the crumble is equally simple. To start, we need oat flour – you can buy it premade or grind your own by tossing some gluten-free oats into a food processor or high speed blender. Just be sure to blend until you get a super fine texture!
Add the oat flour, oats, chopped pecans, coconut sugar, salt and cinnamon to a bowl. Next, add in your coconut oil or ghee. Using your fingers, rub the fat into the dry ingredients until you end up with a sandy texture. Sprinkle that crumble topping over your berries.
Next, all that’s left is to bake for 40-45 minutes or until the crust is golden and berries are bubbling away!
Serving your healthy berry crisp
This berry crisp is best served straight out of the oven when it’s nice and warm. It helps to keep the top nice + crunchy – although my husband and I have both been known to eat this cold from the fridge!
This recipe is so, so good, you really don’t need ice cream on top, BUT if you want to really wow people with what you’re serving, a scoop of vanilla ice cream will do just that.
Topping this baby with a spoonful of coconut yogurt is divine for breakgast or even as a snack! Berry + oats are a combo that can’t go wrong, right?
If you want to reheat this healthy berry crisp, feel free to pop single servings in the mircrowave. You can also reheat the entire thing in the oven, just be sure to cover the top so it doesn’t burn!
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If you make this recipe, be sure to comment below + let me know how it was! It fills my heart + helps my website so much. Also, tag me in your photos on instagram at @jessicaeatsrealfood so I can see it + share!
Healthy Berry Crisp
Ingredients
- 6 cups mixed berries, fresh or frozen
- 1 half lemon
- 2 tbsp arrowroot starch
- 1 tsp vanilla
Crumble
- 1 cup gluten-free oat flour
- 1/2 cup gluten-free oats
- 1/3 cup chopped pecans
- 1/3 cup coconut sugar
- 1/3 cup ghee, coconut oil or butter
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 large pinch salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350f or 175c and grab an 8×8, 9×9 or 9×11 baking dish. The larger the dish, the more shallow the crisp will be!
- In a bowl, mix together the berries, arrowroot powder, juice from the half a lemon and a tsp of vanilla.
- Pour the berry mixture into a baking dish.
- In a medium bowl, mix together the oat flour, oats, coconut sugar, pecans, cinnamon and salt. Add the fat you choose and use your fingers to rub the fat into the dry ingredients until it has a sandy texture.
- Sprinkle the crumble mixture all over the top of the berry mixture.
- Place into the preheated oven and bake for 40-45 minutes or until the crust on top appears golden and crispy.
- Let rest for 5-10 minutes before serving.
