Crisp, Crumble, Cobbler, and Buckle: Here's the Lowdown on These Easy Fruit Desserts (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between a crisp cobbler crumble and a buckle? ›

Though crumbles, crisps, and cobblers are more akin to pie, a buckle is a lot like cake. In fact, they look nearly identical to fruit-filled coffee cakes. As the batter rises in the oven, the weight of the fruit causes it to “buckle.”

A buckle is a funny name for an old fashioned fruit studded coffee cake. Like many other desserts in the extended cobbler family buckles take their name from their appearance—grunts grunt as they cook, slumps slump when served, buckles—you guessed it—buckle.

Crisps, Crumbles, Cobblers and Brown Bettys

All contain fruit that is mixed with sugar and often thickened with flour, cornstarch or tapioca. They are often served with ice cream or whipped cream on the side. All are popular simple summer desserts that use readily available fruit.

A crumble is just a crisp without oats in the streusel. It may feature nuts, but the streusel topping is usually a simple combination of butter, flour, and sugar that is more clumpy than that of a crisp.

A crumble (British English) or crisp (American English) is typically a dessert with a crumbly topping consisting of flour, butter, sugar, and sometimes oats, baked over a fruit filling.

This has led some historians to believe that Betty was the name of the cook and creator of the recipe and that brown was in reference to her skin color.

A brown betty is similar to a crisp or crumble, except the topping is layered into the fruit mixture before baking for an intensely crunchy effect.

What Is a Cobbler? Cobblers differ from crisps or crumbles in that they typically have a biscuit topping covering the cooked fruit. The biscuits are usually dropped onto the fruit in small rounds, giving it the appearance of a cobbled road, hence the name.

Cobbler's name comes from its sometimes cobbled texture, which is a result of spooning or dropping the topping over the fruit rather than distributing it equally. This way, the filling can peek through.

While both are fruit desserts that can be made in the oven in a baking dish, or on a stovetop skillet, cobblers and crisps have nuanced differences, including: Exterior: Cobblers are denser due to the biscuit dough topping and base, while crisps use oats and a streusel topping, making them lighter.

What is the secret to good crumble? ›

I think the secret to a good crumble is 50-50 crumble to fruit. Just over half fat and sugar to plain flour. Pinch of ginger or cinnamon (depending on fruit). Once you have crumbled this all up (cold hands, work as quickly as poss to minimise melting the butter) put it in the fridge for an hour before use.

Too much butter and your topping will become a greasy blob or disappointingly soggy. Some recipes will ask you to cut in cold butter along with your dry ingredients, resulting in pea-size pieces that are sprinkled across the hot fruit filling.

Buckle: A buckle consists of fruit and cake baked together, with a streusel topping. As it bakes the fruit and streusel topping makes the cake “buckle.” It very much resembles a coffee cake.

Cobbler is a dessert consisting of a fruit (or less commonly savory) filling poured into a large baking dish and covered with a batter, biscuit, or dumpling (in the United Kingdom) before being baked.

A crisp is “a type of dessert consisting of fruit baked with a crumble topping,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary's definition, citing an early use in a 1916 recipe for an apple crisp with a topping of butter, sugar, and flour that's mixed together by rubbing your fingertips “*ntil crumbly.” Often, at least ...

Buckles. A charmingly old-fashioned dessert that deserves a comeback, a buckle is a single-layer cake with berries or cut-up fruit in the batter, giving it a "buckled," or indented, appearance.

If you're jumping up and down on a cardboard box, it'll eventually crumple under your weight and fold in on itself. Make sure you don't confuse crumple with the similar looking crumble, which means to break apart into small fragments. If you crumple something, it stays in one piece — it's just wrinkled or folded.

A pastry chef friend shared the technique. Instead of sprinkling the raw crumbs on top of the fruit, where they absorb the juices and turn a little mushy on their undersides, he spread them out in a pan and baked them separately, until crisp and cookielike.

Both are very similar apple desserts, but the difference mainly comes down to the crumble topping: Instead of the flour and oat mixture used in an apple crisp, an apple brown betty uses breadcrumbs for its crumbly, delicious topping.