Wednesday, 10 September 2014

The Ultimate Autumnal Crumble

You may think I'm crazy but I am so glad summer is coming to an end and Autumn is around the corner. Apart from Christmas, the months of September and October are probably my favourite time of year. Its filled with sunny yet chilly days and dark, cosy nights. Its acceptable to dig out knitwear and boots to walk through crunchy, orange leaves. Its a time of new stationery and hot chocolate. Its also time to start cooking warming and comforting food - soup, roast dinner, pies and fruit crumbles.

As soon as it turned September I was desperate to make this Apple and Blackberry Crumble because finally it felt acceptable to get excited about the return of Autumn. Plus, I've just finished re-watching all the episodes of Friday Night Dinner on 4OD and the constant reference to "Crimble Crumble" was making me crave some.


The topping is crunchy, the fruit is juicy and its easy to whip up to enjoy after a Sunday roast or on a miserable evening.

This recipe is slightly adapted from here.

You will need:

For the crumble

225g of plain flour
175g of butter
55g of demerara sugar
125g of a mixture of oats, seeds and chopped nuts

For the fruity filling

4/5 cooking apples
180g - 250g of blackberries
175g of demerara sugar

Equipment

1 large pie dish

Method

A little note on the ingredients, I only had about 40g of demerara sugar in my cupboards so I used a mixture of demerara, soft light brown, granulated and muscovado sugars and it turned out fine. I would say that brown sugar works better in this recipe but I wouldn't solely use muscovado sugar. Also, the original recipe says to use more fruit than I have, simply because I don't have a dish big enough to fit it all in. I reduced the amount of fruit but kept the amount of crumble the same because I often find there isn't enough crumble compared to fruit in some recipes.

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.

Begin by making the crumble. Cut the butter into small cubes and rub into the flour to create a breadcrumb texture. The crumbs don't have to be too fine, the chunkier the crumb, the crunchier the topping will be. Mix in the sugar and the extra bits. I added about 60g of oats, 40g of mixed chopped nuts (you can buy bags of chopped nuts in the baking section in supermarkets) and 25g of pumpkin seeds.

Peel and cut the apples into medium sized slices. Cover the bottom of the dish with apple, throw in a handful of blackberries and sprinkle some of the sugar over the top.



Keep layering the fruit and sugar until, either you've used it all or it fills at least half of the dish. Sprinkle the crumble mixture over the top until the dish is full. Make sure you don't pat the mixture down otherwise it will get rid of its crumble texture.


Bake for 45-60 minutes, until the fruit juices are bubbling around the edges and the crumble is golden.


Serve with cream, custard or ice cream and enjoy!

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