Spiced Sparkling Apple Crisp Inspired by Sprinkles! {Cookbook Review}

When I tore open the envelope from Quirk Books and saw Jackie Alpers' Sprinkles! Recipes and Ideas for Rainbowlicious Desserts,* I'm pretty sure that I squealed. A full-blown, high-pitched girlie squeal. Being surrounded by boys - my husband and my two sons - I delight in all things glittery. And sprinkles, well, they're just edible glitter.

Jackie inspired the Kitchen Elves and me to up the fun factor on breakfast one morning with Pearly Belgian Waffles and to serve up some decorated snacks with our Hollywood Stars Party Popcorn.

Three words: What. Delicious. Fun.

Sprinkles! is a guide to creating foods with a colorful twist: sprinkles! You can scatter them over cakes and fold them into pie crusts. But you can also swirl them into waffle batter, “embroider” them onto cookies, and freeze them in pretty popsicles. Jackie Alpers shares dozens of creative and colorful recipes, quick-and-easy projects, holiday treats, and sprinkles crafts that are great for gifting.

Jackie also provides easy-to-follow tutorials for tinting sparkling sugars, crafting homemade pop rocks, and even making your own sprinkles from scratch. Sprinkles! is gleefully vibrant explosion of  edible glitter that you won't want to miss.

Jackie Alpers is an award-winning photographer who writes, cooks, and styles recipes in her kitchen in Tucson, Arizona. You can follow her culinary creations on her food blog, Jackie's Happy Plate.

Inspired by the glitz, I decided to make an apple crisp shine by sprinkling it with silver cupcake gems to create a...

Spiced Sparkling Apple Crisp

inspired by Jackie Alpers' Sprinkles! Recipes and Ideas for Rainbowlicious Desserts,

4 apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
2 pears, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
1 T flour
2 T organic granulated sugar
ground cinnamon
ground cardamom
ground cloves
ground nutmeg
2 T butter

Crisp

6 T butter 

1 C flour

1/4 C ground almonds

ground cinnamon
ground cardamom
ground cloves
ground nutmeg
silver cupcake gems

Mix the apple and pear slices, sugar, flour, and spices together until the fruits are well-covered. Spoon them into a pie dish and dot the fruit with the 2 T butter. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix all of the crisp ingredients together with a pastry cutter until combined and crumbly. Top the fruit with the crumble and sprinkle with the silver cupcake gems. Bake until the filling is bubbling and the crisp beginning to brown. It might take 50-55 minutes. Serve immediately, or while still warm.

Though the sprinkles don't add anything to the flavor of the dish, it takes the fun-factor up more than a couple of notches! I'm looking forward to using the sprinkles I bought for this review throughout the holiday season. Fun, fun, fun!

*I did receive a complimentary copy of the cookbook from the publishers. 

But all opinions are 100% my own.