In one of those strange sequence of events I bought my team at work some donuts and Dominic responded with a recipe for Apple Crumble. Dominic fancies a lot of crumble and a lot of spices and his recipe reflects this. But given the relish with which he described this masterpiece I’d say this is well worth a try.
Dominic's Spicy Apple Crumble - or is that a "Jack"?
Ingredients
For the filling
- 1 kg Bramley Apples sour/tarte and firm, peeled and sliced
- A few tablespoons of really rough brown sugar - light muscovado or a coarse demerara
- about 1.5 heaped teaspoons ground ginger
- about 3-4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- about 1/2 teaspoon of ground clove
- about a cup full of raisins
- [Optional] star anise
For the topping
- 100 g plain spelt flour ordinary white flour would also work
- 200 g jumbo oats
- 180 g demerara or light muscovado sugar
- about 130g butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 200º C.
- Put all filling ingredients in a big pan to stew slowly with a little water until soft.
- Spoon apple mixture into a wide ovenproof dish.
- Put all topping ingredients into a bowl and rub in. Alternatively dump it into a food mixer and run slowly until well combined.
- Scatter the topping over and bake for around 25 minutes until golden on top.
- I served mine with double cream mixed with vanilla bean paste to make a vanilla cream. Custard, and vanilla ice cream also work well.
- 😀
Notes
So — apple crumble is all about the Bramley Apples. There are some sold in supermarkets that look like Bramleys and are indeed sold as them, but you try to cook with them and they turn out all fluffy and watery. A Bramley proper is firm and very tart, should require a bit of sugar to make it more palatable.
My preference for a crumble is that there should be a proper amount of the crumble topping. Not a cursory sprinkle as you see sometimes in pubs. A crumble that includes oats is technically a 'jack' but most folk still call it a crumble. I like oats, so there's a lot in! I went massively over the quantities, as I like a lot of topping! 😉
Note about sugar. Demarara or light brown muscovado are important over 'brown sugar' as they are 'unrefined' and contain more molasses which is good for flavour. The 'brown sugar' or anything 'refined' has the colour re-added as caramel, which doesn't have such a nice flavour.
So eager was I to eat this #apple #crumble with oats, cinnamon, ginger and clove that I neglected to take a pic of the thing as it came from the oven. Here the photo is of the remaining third after Hedley and Mim helped polish off a good large portion!
Inspiration: Nigel Slater is a good honest sort of cook. I've had many successes following his writing in "Real Fast Food' and "Real Fast Puddings". Here's his http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/applecrumble_89166 Adapted from Nigel Slater
My preference for a crumble is that there should be a proper amount of the crumble topping. Not a cursory sprinkle as you see sometimes in pubs. A crumble that includes oats is technically a 'jack' but most folk still call it a crumble. I like oats, so there's a lot in! I went massively over the quantities, as I like a lot of topping! 😉
Note about sugar. Demarara or light brown muscovado are important over 'brown sugar' as they are 'unrefined' and contain more molasses which is good for flavour. The 'brown sugar' or anything 'refined' has the colour re-added as caramel, which doesn't have such a nice flavour.
So eager was I to eat this #apple #crumble with oats, cinnamon, ginger and clove that I neglected to take a pic of the thing as it came from the oven. Here the photo is of the remaining third after Hedley and Mim helped polish off a good large portion!
Inspiration: Nigel Slater is a good honest sort of cook. I've had many successes following his writing in "Real Fast Food' and "Real Fast Puddings". Here's his http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/applecrumble_89166 Adapted from Nigel Slater
I always see a recipe as more an inspiration or ‘loose guidelines’ than a strict formula. This came out quite oaty (heavy texture).
I made this again on Sunday, and changed the quantities to 150g each of flour and oats. I omitted the spices and added them as a dusting on top once served, adjusted to individual preference.
Lovely!
Thanks Dominic. I think I’ll try the spice-heavy version first. 🙂