We took a walk over Devil’s Dyke this week. My intention had been to fill a bucket with blackberries and make jam, but I discovered it’s slightly too early in the season for a proper foraging session, so I just picked a few handfuls of the most ripe berries to make a crumble instead.
I don’t think I’ve ever followed the same recipe twice for a fruit crumble. Unlike a lot of other baking, it seems to be quite forgiving if you mess with the proportions of the key ingredients, and rarely fails to taste good. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so pleased with the outcome as with this week’s crumble, and for this reason I’m blogging the recipe, so I’ll remember it for next time!
This will give you 4-6 portions.
Ingredients
30g butter
3 Bramley apples
Caster sugar, up to 150g
Pinch of mixed spice
A few handfuls of blackberries
75g butter (cold from the fridge)
170g plain flour
75g sugar - I used about 50g demerara and 25g golden caster sugar
4 tbsp rolled oats (porridge oats)
2 tbsp flaked almonds
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 200°C. Rinse the blackberries thoroughly (I usually let them sit in a bowl of water for a while so any wriggly creatures float to the surface, and then rinse in a few changes of clean water), tip them into a colander and leave to drain.
Peel the apples, cut each into 6 chunks, slice out the cores and then chop into 5mm pieces.
Melt 30g butter in a saucepan and sauté the apples on a low heat until they are cooked (the fruit should still be chunky, but soft enough to break under the pressure of the spoon). Add caster sugar to taste, plus the mixed spice, and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Transfer to a baking dish, and sprinkle the blackberries evenly over the top, pushing them down gently to create a fairly even surface.
In a large bowl, chop the cold butter, add the flour, and rub the two ingredients together with your fingertips until you have a sand-like consistency. Add the sugar, oats and almonds, stir to combine, then tip the mixture over the fruit, gently pushing it to the edges of the dish and leveling the surface, without applying so much pressure that the crumbly texture is lost.
Bake until the topping turns golden - I think this took about 40 minutes in my oven, but just keep checking from 20 minutes onwards, you’ll know from it’s appearance when it’s done.
I served this with lightly-whipped double cream, to which I’d added a little vanilla sugar (a few drops of vanilla extract and a little caster sugar adds the same sweetness).