Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Crumble

Right, as promised the crumble review. I got slightly hindered by stopping for a few beers on the way home, this also prevented any power tooling by my girlfriend, but the crumble still turned out great.

Simple Apple Crumble

Shopping difficulty: Easy.
Amount of washing up: Almost none, and it's easy.
Time from start to eating: 40 mins
Equipment: Some kind of baking dish.
Cost: £2.50 ish
Feeds: 4



Ingredients

Apples (get big ones, we had silly small apples and it's more effort to peel and chop them)
Pack of Shortbread
Sugar
Custard
Optional:
Cloves
Cinnamon
Brandy



Peel and chop your apples and stick them in your dish. How many you need depends on the size of your dish. Put the apples in the dish as you go, so you know when to stop.
Generally booze makes puddings better so add some brandy to the dish with the apples, and if you want some cloves and a stick of cinnamon. (count them in, you want to remove them later).
Add some sugar, you don't need much. With a crumble unlike an apple pie, the sweetness comes from the topping not the apples. I added a little sprinkling of dark brown sugar, but any sugar is fine. You could leave it out entirely if you wanted.
Cover the dish with foil and stick it in the oven for 20 mins at 180C/350F/Gas 4.

Whilst the apples are cooking away you need to turn your shortbread into crumble. You can put it in a plastic bag and bash it with a rolling pin, which is quite fun, or you can do it the easy way and stick it in a food processor.










After 20 mins, take the apple out of the oven, it should have softened and the sugar should have dissolved, but you still want the apples to look like chunks of apple rather than apple sauce.

At this point, remove any cloves or cinnamon sticks you put in the apples, nicer for people if they don't eat whole spices!

Leave to cool for a few minutes, then pour your crumble onto the top of the apple, spread it so it covers the whole dish and return to the oven for another 10 minutes.

Serve with custard. I just bought some ready made custard from the supermarket and microwaved it. You could theoretically serve it with cream or even ice cream, but that would be totally wrong, an offence against desserts. Why even think it you pervert!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice worktop!!