Sunday, March 05, 2006
Crispy Apple Crumble
It is time for dessert. In fact, it has been time for dessert for months now, but every time I decided to tackle the issue, it was either too late or we had no ingredients in the house. This week I was determined not to let that happen again and kept an eye out for things that looked like good dessert ingredients. I struck gold at my little local greengrocer in the shape of a pound of firm, fresh cooking apples with beautiful green and red skin. I could swear that they were whispering to me “Please make us in a crumble!”, and I could almost taste their refreshing tartness under a big pile of buttery crumbs. This just seemed perfect for a grey day like this. The key word here being ‘seemed’. I was my usual self again and found a million excuses for not actually making the crumble. But I made up for my shortcomings on Monday and served it after our lazy pizzas.500 g Bramley apples, peeled, quartered and cored
55 g caster sugar
½ lemon, finely grated zest only (alternatively 1 tsp lemon marmalade)
currants (as many as you like, alternatively use dried cherries, blueberries or cranberries)
110 g flour
85 g butter
30 g flaked almonds, roughly crushed
40 g Demerara sugar
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and grease a 1.5 litre ovenproof dish with a little butter. Cut each apple quarter into medium-sized chunks.
Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the apples, caster sugar and lemon zest. Cook over a medium heat for about 10 minutes until the apples begin to soften. Stir in the currants and then tip the mixture into the buttered dish.
For the topping, in a large bowl, rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Knead in the almonds and sugar, then scatter over the filling. Place in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden and crunchy.
Christine at 5:38 pm
