Fruit Crumble
The butter for the topping has to be properly cold — keep it in the freezer and grate it straight into the flour and powdered sugar. Warm butter binds the dry mix into dough on contact, and you end up with a lid of shortbread instead of loose crumb. Rub it in quickly and carelessly with your fingertips: an uneven mix of pebble-sized and sandy bits bakes better than a uniform one, because the big pieces stay short while the fine ones fuse into a crisp lattice.
The fruit layer leans closer to mulled wine than to stewed fruit — 600 g (about 1 lb 5 oz) of fruit simmers with 100 ml of dry red, a cinnamon stick, cardamom, and a single clove until the liquid halves. Use a mix: pears and apples hold their 1.5 cm dice, plums and cranberries give up juice and colour. Stop short of soft on the stove, since the fruit gets another thirty minutes at 210 C (410 F) and any surplus liquid soaks the crumb from below. Walnuts swap for almonds one for one, or leave the nuts out. Serve warm with ice cream melting into the hot topping; the crumb itself freezes well for a few days.
Part of British cuisine — 10 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Cut the fruit into 1.5 cm cubes. Put it in a pot together with the berries, cover with sugar, and pour in the water and wine. Add the spices and the butter and set over high heat. Stew for 15 to 20 minutes, until the liquid reduces by half and thickens and the fruit turns soft.
For the dough, mix the flour with the powdered sugar, vanilla sugar, and nut crumb. Grate or chop the butter with a knife and add it to the dry mixture. Rub it together with your hands into a coarse crumb.
Grease ovenproof ramekins with butter and dust with flour. Divide the stewed fruit and berries with their syrup among them. Sprinkle with the shortbread crumb and place in an oven preheated to 410 F (210 C) for 30 minutes. Serve the crumbles warm with a scoop of ice cream.
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