Anyone who knows me knows that I prefer desserts with lots of butter, flour, sugar, eggs, sour cream and/or cream cheese.  I also tend not to like ingredients that seek to “mimic” these traditional dessert ingredients (no tofu or quar gum or applesauce or tapioca in my baked goods).  Which means I’m fairly certain that a “vegan dessert” will never come out of my kitchen.  And certainly my own intolerance for “artificial sweeteners” (in all of their guises; they give me migraines) will keep plain old white and brown sugar in my pantry indefinitely.

On the other hand, when a recipe requires only minor variation to go from “traditional” to “restricted diet,” I’m willing to give it a try.  Just as I was getting ready for Autumn Apple Crisp season, I stumbled on several recipes for “Gluten-Free Fruit Crumbles”  that use ground quinoa in place of flour.  I’m a fairly recent, but enthusiastic, convert to quinoa, so I keep a supply of it in the pantry (well actually in the refrigerator).  Once I figured out that my mini-chopper would not grind quinoa but my spare (and well-cleaned) coffee grinder would, I was all set to give “gluten-free dessert” a try.

Here’s what I came up with:

Pear-Apple Crumble with Gluten-Free Oat-Quinoa-Pecan Topping Recipe