Apple Crumble

Last Friday we all headed to Oxford, where two of us are from, and spent the long weekend catching up with family and friends.  We went for walks in the woods, visited a few of our favourite haunts, and got busy in our family kitchens.

Our meals were definitely influenced by our location, access to different fridges, recipe books, and seasonal organic veg boxes. We'll post more of our meals later in the week.  For now though, whilst the rain is still heavy, we want to share this crumble recipe.

This crumble is made with fallen apples from one of our parents' garden.  They stew tons during autumn months and freeze plenty to keep the crumbles coming year round.  However, not everyone has an apple tree in their garden, we definitely don't in London, where we use Bramley apples instead.

Most people have an opinion on the fruit to crumble ratio and the general sweetness.  Our preference is fruit heavy and not too sweet, but you can amend the quantities to fit your taste.

We added a bit of gentle spice to our topping with a mixture of powdered ginger, nutmeg, allspice and cassia.  Ours came out of a packet but you could do something similar if you have any of these spices in your cupboard.

Due to dietary needs we used gluten free flour, but this could be replaced with plain. 

Fed 9

Store Cupboard:
Topping:

160g flour

50g oats

80g unsalted butter

40g soft brown sugar

Filling:

Approx. 6-8 Bramley apples
2/3 tbsp dark brown sugar


- Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6

- Peel and core the apples, then chop into chunks (approx. bite-sized) and put into a bowl of water to keep from going brown.

- Once all your apples are chopped drain and tip into a pan.

- Sprinkle the sugar on top.  The apples will be wet from soaking and you shouldn’t need to add any extra water.

- Cook over a gentle heat until pulpy - approx 15/20 minutes.

- Remove from the heat and add to an over proof dish or pie tin.

- Put the butter, flour and oats into a bowl and mix well with your hands.  You may need to add a bit more butter if the mixture hasn’t gone crumbly enough.

- Add the sugar and mix thoroughly.

- Cover the apples with the crumble topping and bake in the oven until golden brown on top; approx. 20/30 minutes.

- Serve with cream, custard, ice-cream or on its own.  We had ours with vanilla custard.