This Dairy-Free Apple Crumble delivers everything this quintessential fall dessert should–delightfully sweet aromas, super crunchy topping, jammy apples–without the need for any butter. {Jump to Recipe}
Five years ago, I started working on what would become my first e-book, Sweet Spot. While working on the overall structure of the book, I brainstormed to jot down all the dairy-laden desserts I couldn’t fully enjoy anymore. My goal—with the e-book but also as a dessert-lover—was to find ways to substitute dairy products in my favorite sweet treats without sacrificing taste. So many dairy-free desserts I’d sampled were insipid versions of the real thing! Some lactose-intolerant people can just cross off dairy from their lives, but I’m not one of them. I love dairy and the texture and flavor it provides to dishes. Sadly, by that point, I had made myself sick several times by overindulging in butter-based pastries and cakes and cookies, so something had to give.
Though I worked hard on testing recipes for Sweet Spot, not all of my new favorite dairy-free desserts ended up in the book, which focused on special-occasion desserts. The one go-to, super-easy, dairy-free recipe I’ve been making several times a year ever since I perfected it is this dairy-free apple crumble.
I grew up enjoying my Mom’s crumbles every fall and have a perpetual longing for those comforting aromas when fall rolls around. The dairy substitute in this dairy-free apple crumble is a really easy one: oil. Using oil instead of butter in the crumble has real nutritional benefits if you choose one that’s low in saturated fat and contains additional nutrients. See the Helpful Tips below for more information about the oils you can use in this recipe.
The crunch in this dairy-free apple crumble comes not only from the usual flour/sugar/fat combination, but from the addition of nuts, which also help to enhance the nutritional value of the dessert. I love indulgent desserts and pastries, but I’m all for making sensible choices when making them at home. In my ideal world, all desserts would taste amazing and at the same time satisfy the sweetest appetites! This dairy-free apple crumble checks all those boxes.
I like to serve this dairy-free apple crumble warm with ice cream, but the combination of oats, nuts, and a ton of apples in this makes it perfectly suitable for breakfast, too! I gladly start cool fall days with a comforting bowl of this crumble topped with vanilla yogurt. I think you should too!
