My new favorite apple crisp

What's your favorite taste of the fall?  Apples? Squash? Sweet potatoes?  Personally, I love them all, but apples are by far my favorite for fall cooking and baking.  I've been taking advantage of the seasonal apple sales at the grocery store and local orchard and bringing at least one bag of apples home each week.  I mostly buy Jonathans, because they are a good all-purpose baking and sauce apple. 

But a few weeks back, I stopped at Bauer's Market in La Crescent, Minn., on my way home from visiting family, and there were several apple varieties that I had never seen in the Iowa orchards I visit.  I decided to try something new, and I brought home a bag of Fireside apples, which were reasonably priced and labeled as good baking apples. 

I was craving apple crisp the other night, so I broke out one of my favorite Iowa church cookbooks and tried a new-to-me recipe.  And talk about beginner's luck -- this apple crisp was wonderful!  It's super easy to make on a weeknight, and the Fireside apples gave the dessert a nice tart bite.

I was pretty generous with the cinnamon called for in the recipe, because my husband believes you can never add too much cinnamon.  (And he's usually right about these things.)

This recipe may not be original or fancy, but it's good.  Really good.  So I'm sharing it with all of you.  Enjoy!

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Apple Crisp
From Deer Creek Lutheran Church Cookbook, Carpenter, Iowa

• Apples, sliced (about 5 large)
• 1/2 C. sugar & cinnamon, to taste
• 1 C. brown sugar
• 1/2 C. quick oatmeal
• 1/2 C. flour
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 C. walnuts, chopped
• 1/3 C. butter

Sliced apples go in bottom of an 8x8-inch pan to the depth of about 2 inches. Mix sugar with cinnamon and sprinkle over top of apples. Mix the brown sugar, oatmeal, flour, vanilla and nuts together. Cut in butter until crumbly. Put over top of apples and bake at 350 to 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Serve warm, with either ice cream or Cool Whip.