The first time I served apple crumble to my Swiss grandfather when I invited him around for tea, I saw him frown and… look pretty disgusted, to say the least!  He asked: “What is that mincemeat dish?”!!!

Inspite of his protests, I gave him a helping and he bravely took a spoonful of this weird-looking foreign mixture… and then he smiled!  And then he ate it all and asked for more, exclaiming: “This is DELICIOUS!”

So… don’t be fooled by the fact the apple crumble’s messy look – it’s truly a delicious dessert!

For this to be perfect, you need to use baking apples that are a little tart.  Depending on where in the world you live, you will have access to different varieties; those I have tried that work best are Boskoop, Braeburn and Bramley apples.

The combination of tart apples and a sweet crunchy topping is heavenly, in my opinion.

This is a very easy dessert to make.  It can easily be prepared in advance and you can even freeze the dish before baking it – then simply take it out of the freezer and bake it straight away, adding about 10-15 minutes to the usual cooking time.

Here is the recipe – I hope you enjoy it as much as we do 🙂

Ingredients:

• 6 big cooking apples (eg. Bramley, Boskoop or Braeburn)
• 100 g cold butter
• 100 g sugar
• 100 g ground almonds
• 70 g cornflour or gluten free flour (Schaer’s Mix C or Dove’s Farm plain flour work great)

Method:

• Peel and core the apples; cut them into thin slices and place them in an ovenproof glass dish.
• In a bowl, mix the sugar, ground almonds and flour.
• Cut the cold butter into small cubes and add it to the dry ingredients.
• Use your hands to blend in the butter, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

This is probably the trickiest part of the recipe.  You can use a food processor to make the crumble, but you have to be extra careful not to mix it too much, or the crumble will almost turn into a dough, making big clumps which are then hard to spread evenly over the apples.  I tend to rub the butter in using my fingers – it’s a little messy and takes a little time, but at least I’m sure I get it right!

• Pour the crumble over the apples.
• Place in the oven and cook for approximately 35 minutes at 200°C, until the apples are cooked and the crumble is golden.

Apple crumble can be eaten warm or cold.  If you eat it warm, serving it with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream makes it extra special – and if you’re serving it cold, pouring a little hot custard over it works extremely well 😉  I must admit, we usually tend to eat it plain, and we LOVE it!