Simple Ginger Pear Crumble – Gluten-Free Vegan Recipe

This simple vegan fruit crumble combines seasonal pears with spicy ginger. The gluten-free, plant-based topping is made from healthy cashews. Portion into small baking tins for your own personal dessert.

How to Build a Basic Fruit Crumble:

A basic fruit crumble has two main components:

1. Sweet fruit filling
2. Crunchy, crumble topping

The sweet fruit filling can include all sorts of season, fresh, or frozen fruits.  Stone fruits like peaches and plums work great.  Yet, you can also use diced apples. Or, give it a tropical twist with sweet mango and coconut.

A traditional fruit crumble topping includes flour, sugar, butter, and a dash of salt.  In the culinary world, this is what we call a Pate Sucre, or a short crust dough.  It’s short because it requires a short cooking time.  The dough doesn’t require any time to rest or rise, unlike bread dough.

How to Bake a Plant-Based, Oil-Free Vegan Fruit Crisp:

Step One: Make a Whole Foods, Plant-Based Fruit Filling

Adapting traditional fruit crisps for a plant-based, oil-free vegan diet is quite easy.  For the fruit filling, you first need to cut out any refined sugar or syrups.  Instead, find the sweetness from fresh or dried fruits.  You can do this by relying a few key plant-based tips:

• Think Seasonal: Fruit is at its juiciest and sweetest when it’s in season.  Think about how delicious peaches are in the middle of summer.  Conversely, think of how rock-hard they can be in the winter.
• Use Frozen: If you can’t find or afford season fruit, frozen is your next-best option.  Frozen fruit is picked at the height of the season and then frozen as quickly as possible.  This locks in the flavor year-round. 
  • Chef’s Tip:  Walk into the freezer of many restaurants, and you’ll see fruit that chefs have frozen when it was in-season.  Most pastry chefs will use this supply to make cakes, ice creams, and other confections even when the season is over.
• Think Tropical: Tropical fruits are naturally sweeter.  Think about bananas, pineapple, and mangos.  These fruits naturally have less water and more natural sugar than some of their temperate-climate friends.
• Add Dried:  Dried fruit has all of the moisture removed.  In turn, this intensifies the fruit flavor and natural sugars in the fruit.  Dried dates, cherries, mango, and pineapple are some of my favorites to add to fruit crisps.  Just be sure to chop the dried fruit into small pieces so that it combines well with the other fruit filling ingredients.
• Spice it up: For a pop of flavor, add some spice. Warm, sweet spices like cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, nutmeg, and clove can enhance the flavor of the fruit, without adding extra sugar or fat. You can even use that jar of Pumpkin Pie Spice you have in the back of your spice rack. For more tips on spices, check out: Spice Essentials Guide: Chef’s Tips for How to Use Spices for Delicious, Healthy Cooking

Step One: Make a Whole Foods, Plant-Based Crumble Topping

For a gluten-free crumble topping of a fruit crisp, you need three main components: flour, sugar, and fat.  Instead of traditional white flour and butter, you’ll use plant-based ingredients.

Brown rice flour or oat flour are my favorite go-to ingredients for a crumble topping.  Unlike traditional wheat flour, these gluten-free flours won’t get chewy.  Therefore, you don’t have to worry about over-mixing.  Brown rice flour tends to have a more neutral flavor and crumbly texture.  Yet, oat flour adds a subtle nutty flavor and smoother texture.  You can even do a combination of the two!

Instead of sugar, I like using dried fruit. Chopped dates are an easy, whole foods swap for granulated sugar. However, its fun to play with other fruits. For this tropical crumble, I went with a tropical fruit (dried mango). Because these dried fruits are granulated like sugar, you’ll need to chop them really well. A food processor works great for this.

For the fat component of a crumble topping, chopped nuts or nut butter are going to be your best options.  Cashews, macadamia, and coconut are some of the richest nuts, giving you the richest flavor.  However, I also love using pecans and walnuts for color and flavor.  If you have a nut allergy, you can stick with coconut.  Or, try using sunflower seeds or hemp seeds.

What’s the Difference Between a Crumble, a Crisp, and a Cobbler?

While these three names are often used interchangeably, there are some distinctions.  All three have stewed or baked fruit as the base.  However, the differences come with the different ways to top that fruit.

Britain created the fruit crumble. This combines stewed fruit with a pastry topping, traditionally made from butter and flour.  In the United States, oats were added to the topping and a crisp was created.  In the southern part of the United States, the topping became thicker and more doughy.  Thus, a cobbler was created. 

The three main differences between these fruit desserts are:

• Fruit Crumble: A fruit filling is topped with a thin, crumbled layer of pastry
• Fruit Crisp: A fruit filling is topped with a thin crisp layer that includes oats
• Fruit Cobbler: A fruit filling is topped with a thick layer of biscuit dough

Chef Katie’s Plant-Based Baking Tips:

What is Brown Rice Flour: Brown Rice flour is made from ground brown rice.  It has a neutral flavor and grainy texture.  It is naturally gluten-free.  Besides baking, you can use it for gluten-free cooking, like in GRAVY.

Individual Portions: For individual-sized portions of this dessert, use Mini Pie Pans. You can make a batch and then freeze them. When ready to enjoy, simply place one in a preheated 375F oven and bake until hot, 10-12 minutes.

Freezer-Friendly: This recipes is incredibly freezer-friendly. Assemble the pear filling and make the crumble topping. Freeze these separately. When ready to bake, preheat your oven to 375F. Then, sprinkle the crumble topping over the pear filling. Bake until hot and golden on top, 35-40 minutes.

Baking Without Refined Sugar or Syrup: I’m on a mission to get rid of empty calories.  This recipe doesn’t use any refined sugar, maple syrup, or other refined sweetener. Mangos and bananas provide sweetness, along with healthy fiber and essential nutrients.

Make Extra Topping: Make extra of the Gluten-Free Crumble topping and freeze it. With frozen peaches and frozen wild blueberries, you’ll be ready to make this dessert in no-time, any season of the year.

Endless Variations:  Use this recipe as a template for enjoying all types of fruits.  You can swap out the pears for apples or peaches. Or, make a Peach, Plum, Wild Blueberry Summer Oat Crisp.

Simple Ginger Pear Crumble – Gluten-Free Vegan Recipe

Medium  |  Servings: 8  |  Ready In: 50 minutes

If you like this recipe, you’ll also enjoy: Peach, Plum, Wild Blueberry Summer Oat Crisp, Gluten-Free Cinnamon Apple Pecan Crumble, Plant-Based Coconut Mango Tropical Fruit Crumble, and Baked Pears with Date Paste, Cardamom, and Orange.

Check out more whole foods, plant-based Fruit Recipes: Cherries, Berries, Pineapple, Pears: 15 Easy and Creative Healthy Fruit Recipes.

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Simple Ginger Pear Crumble – Gluten-Free Vegan Recipe

This simple vegan fruit crumble combines seasonal pears with spicy ginger. The gluten-free, plant-based topping is made from healthy cashews. Portion into small baking tins for your own personal dessert.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American, Gluten-Free, Healthy, Plant-Based, Vegan, Vegetarian

Keyword baked, baking, comfort food, crisp, crumble, dairy-free, dessert, dried fruit, egg-free, ginger, gluten-free, healthy, spices, vegan, vegetarian

Total Time 1 hour hour

Servings 8

Calories 196kcal

Ingredients

For the Plant-Based Ginger Pear Filling:

• 5 medium pears cored and diced
• ½ cup water
• ¼ cup brown rice flour 40g
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt

For the Gluten-Free Crumble Topping:

• ½ cup dates soaked in warm water 10 minutes 100g
• ½ cup raw cashews 56 g
• 1/2 cup brown rice flour 80g
• Pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup water as needed

Instructions

• Preheat your oven to 375F

To make the Ginger Pear filling:

• Heat a wide pan over medium heat. Add the pears and water and cover. When the pears have started to soften, after about 8 minutes, add the brown rice flour, ginger, and cinnamon. Stir well. Cook, uncovered, until the brown rice flour is absorbed. Remove from the heat. Stir in the lemon juice, vanilla, and pinch of salt.
• While the pears are cooking, you can make your crumble topping.

To make the Gluten-Free Crumble Topping:

• Remove the dates from the soaking water, but save the water. In a food processor, food chopper, or blender, combine the dates and macadamia nuts. Pulse until very well chopped, about 20-25 pulses. Add the brown rice flour and a dash of salt. Add 2 tablespoons of the date soaking water. Puree the mixture. It should start to come together into small, pea-sized clumps. Add more water, one tablespoon at a time, until you reach this texture.

To make and bake the Plant-Based Ginger Pear Fruit Crumble:

• Pour the Plant-Based Ginger Pear Filling into an 8-inch pie pan. Sprinkle the Gluten-Free Crumble Topping evenly to cover. Place in the oven and bake 30-40 minutes, until golden brown on top and hot and bubbly around the edges.
• Let cool about 10 minutes before serving.

Notes

Medium
Servings: 8
Ready In: 60 minutes

Nutrition Facts

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