Cooking Up a Crumble

It has been a long while since I last posted here, but I thought that I had better do so today before I lose out.

You see, I have a friend in Cape Town whose name is Tandy. I believe that she is a wonderful cook, though I have never tasted any of her cooking, because she has a food blog with recipes that make my mouth water. Her blog is called Lavender and Lime and can be found here.

In any case, Tandy is running a baking competition where the winner will get a cassis rectangular bake set from Le Creuset. For those of you who don't know what Le Creuset is, I don't particularly blame you. Until a few years ago, I had no idea! And then I went to see Julie & Julia, a wonderful movie that follows the life of Julia Child and Julie Powell's attempts a recreating her recipes. It turns out that Julia Child was a big fan of Le Creuset bakeware. And so are a number of other people that I know of, including Tandy and Lynne, another family friend. So when I heard about the giveaway, I knew that I would have to get involved. Sure, it wasn't likely that I would win the prize, but I wasn't going to let the opportunity pass me by!

The competition involved baking something and, not being particularly good at baking myself or having very much experience with it, I decided to go for something simple to start off with. Grant suggested Apple Crumble, since it is one of his favourite desserts. So, apple crumble it was to be! I scoured my cookbooks for a recipe, and when they failed me, I went online and found one that I liked the sound of. With the recipe scrawled down, off I went to the shops to get the ingredients for it:

FILLING
1/2 cup castor sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon

CRUMBLE
1 cup plain flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup coconut
1 tbs ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/3 cup melted butter
Apple juice
2 tbs vanilla essence

EXTRAS
Whipped cream

You may notice one gaping whole in this list of ingredients, and that is apples. That is because buying apples for Grant is a very difficult process - he only likes Granny Smiths, and that seems to be the one kind that the Grahamstown Pick n Pay never seems to stock. So, instead of buying apples and boiling them down myself only to have Grant upset with me, I chose to get a can of apples to replace it with, and Grant was thrilled with my decision. So, I used a large tin of canned apples instead of the 7 apples that the recipe recommended. If you are going to do the apples yourself, make sure to set aside the juice that comes from out of them for later.

Once your apples (canned or stewed/boiled/however you like to do them) are ready, combine the castor sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon, mix well and toss through the apples. Place the apple mix evenly in a medium casserole dish and set it aside for later.



To start the crumble, combine the flour, brown sugar, oats, coconut, cinnamon and nutmeg in a large bowl and mix thoroughly.





Now you can start to melt the butter, and this is where I started to deviate from the recipe slightly on the advice of some comments that I had found on the recipe. The recipe recommended a 2/3 cup of butter, but some people recommended using only 1/3 butter and mixing in the leftover apple juice. Not having made the apples myself, I bought some apple juice and added a swig of it to the butter once it was melted. Also add the vanilla essence to the butter and apple juice and mix them together.

Add the butter mix to the dry ingredients and mix well. The recipe recommended a fork, but I found using my hands to be a lot quicker and easier. Ensure that all of the ingredients are moist and the mixture has a crumbly texture.





Spread the crumble evenly over the apple mixture and bake in a preheated oven at 180'C for 30-40 minutes or until the crumble is slightly browned.





We chose to serve the crumble with whipped cream, but it can also be served with ice cream or custard. One person even suggested putting Nestle Treat over the top, an idea that I found intriguing, but which Grant quickly vetoed. I will have to try it another time.




Either way, the dessert went down an absolute treat. The friends that came over for dinner on the night that I made it did nothing but wow over it, each of them having seconds (even our neighbour's son who hardly ate any dinner at all). So if that isn't a success, I don't know what is.



I made a second one a couple of nights later, as we had tons of extra ingredients, and I followed the recipe exactly the second time - using a 2/3 cup of butter and no apple juice, and I definitely think that the apple juice was an improvement on the recipe. I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, all of the photos were taken at night in a badly lit kitchen and are examples of the non-juice version. However you make it, ENJOY!