What better way to embrace Autumn, than to enjoy the classic dessert: blackberry & apple crumble.
This time of year is so wonderful, as the leaves on the trees and hedges start to change, and abundances of blackberries and apples abound, waiting to be picked.
As a family, we really enjoy foraging for blackberries, picking apples from our neighbour’s tree (with permission, honest) and then bringing all our findings home to create a wonderful and fresh autumn pudding.
For the home grower, we have a fantastic range. A top blackberry for me is Merton Thornless, which is bigger than most and a fair bit sweeter. There are so many apple varieties that I could never have a final favourite, still, for eating, I want a snappy-crisp, wake-me-up sharp flavour, so I would pick Adams Pearmain, and for a cooking apple, I adore a Crawley Beauty. It bakes to a soft purée, which is also great for making apple pies!
Foraged, ripe blackberries with nowhere to hide
The recipe below uses slightly less sugar than your average blackberry and apple crumble, as we love it a bit tart. We add lots of thick double cream to compensate!
Ingredients for fruit mixture
- 250g freshly picked blackberries
- 5 medium sized cooking apples (peeled, cored & chopped)
- Zest of 1 Lemon
- 50g caster sugar
Ingredients for crumble
- 75g ground almonds
- 125g unsalted butter (softened)
- 175g plain flour
- 60g demerara sugar
- 10g ground ginger
The blackberries, lemon zest, caster sugar and apples, getting exactly what they deserve
Method
- Place the blackberries, lemon zest, caster sugar and apples in a pan
- Cover with a lid and cook on a low-medium heat (stirring occasionally) until soft
- Pre-heat oven to 180oc
- Add all the crumble ingredients to a bowl and combine, until mixture resembles breadcrumbs
A casual crumble mix, just hanging out
- Do not overmix
- Place crumble mix on baking tray and cook in the oven for (approx) 15 minutes
Crumble mix on high alert, added to the baking tray and ready for action
- Place fruit mixture into an oven-ware dish (approx 30cm x 20cm)
- Add crumble on top and bake for a further 20 minutes
- Serve with Ice cream, or our family favourite, extra thick double cream – yum!
Blackberry & apple crumble suffering under the oppressive weight of all that cream. This will be an act of mercy…
Did you miss out the flour from the crumble recipe?
Thank you very much for spotting this. We have just added this on to the recipe. It is 175g plain flour.