If you can’t decide between apple pie or apple crisp, have both! This Apple Cider Caramel Slab Pie with Oat and Almond Crisp topping is the best of both worlds.

The apples, I used a mix of Honeycrisp and Granny Smith, get a coating of apple cider caramel before baking. The filling recipe for this dessert was created by the pie queen Erin Jeanne McDowell. She literally wrote The Book on Pie. She had the brilliant idea to reduce apple cider to a caramel-like consistency. It creates the most intense apple flavoured pie you will ever eat. It takes about 20 minutes to cook down the cider to a thin caramel.

Check out this video on how it all comes together.

I adapted Erin’s recipe and baked it in a quarter sheet pan to make a slab pie. I decided to forgo the top pie crust and finish mine with an Oat and Almond Crisp Topping.

This is my go-to crisp topping. I always have a bag of it in the freezer ready to top whatever fruit is in season. Crumbly and buttery, packed with chopped toasted almonds, oats, brown sugar and flour, it never fails to satisfy.

A scoop of salted caramel or butterscotch ice cream would be very welcome.

Click here to print recipe for Caramel Apple Cider Slab Pie with Oat and Almond Crisp Topping.