Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.
What is your favorite fruit dish? Can you share a recipe for it? While we’re talking about food, pumpkin, yea or nay?
Apples have to be my favourite fruit, they’re so versatile.
You can use them in savoury dishes, I add chopped apple to minced beef when making cottage pie and put chunks in a sausage and vegetable traybake. They also complement the flavour of pork.
In the sweet department, Apple Pie is a favourite as well as the subject of today’s post, Apple Crumble.
In this picture, the apple is mixed with some rhubarb, all from my garden.
To make a crumble, first, stew the peeled, cored and cubed apples, together with whatever other fruit you have. If it’s a bit too liquid, add some sultanas to absorb the juice and maybe some cinnamon. Place the stewed fruit in an oven-proof bowl.
To make the topping, you need plain flour, oats, butter and dark brown sugar in the proportion 2:1:1 so for every 2 oz of flour/oats mixture, you add 1 oz sugar and 1 oz butter. As a twist, you can add a handful of mixed seeds to the mixture,
The topping needs to be made using cubes of cold butter, everything is rubbed together into a rough, lumpy mixture, before being spread over the fruit. Make enough topping to generously cover your fruit.
Bake at 180°C for around 40-50 minutes, depending on the size, until the top is golden. Serve with clotted cream, custard or ice-cream.
As for Pumpkin?
That’s a maybe.
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Stevie Turner
I hadn’t thought of adding an apple to cottage pie, but I’ll have to try that!
Richard Dee
My mother used to add a little chopped apple to mince and onions, it definitely improves the flavour.
P.J. MacLayne
I’m of the opinion that cinnamon is practically a necessity!
Richard Dee
Me too!! Some (strange) people don’t seem to like it?
Lela Markham
I use cinnamon in Asian dishes too.
Richard Dee
I do like a bit, but to me, it always means Christmas.
Phil Huston
So, when is the open house? I’m with Stevie on the cottage pie but I’m so lazy I buy my sausage (pork or chicken) pre-stuffed with apples in the mix. Minced Apple and jalapeno sausage is a real treat! hot and cool and sweet. Yes sir!
Richard Dee
You’re all welcome, we get our sausage direct from a local farm, he has some incredible flavour combinations.
Roberta Eaton Cheadle
Thanks for your recipe, Richard. I will try it. Apple crumble will make a nice change. I don’t know if you get much in the way of rhubarb here. I’ll have to look.
Richard Dee
You’re most welcome. We are having a beef stew tomorrow, although rather boringly, it will be made in a slow cooker 🙁
Amy Miller
I love fruit crumbles! And I have to second the cinnamon being a necessary ingredient.
Richard Dee
I’m with you. Cinnamon is one of those things, love it or hate it?
Lela Markham
I love the recipe. I’ll have to wait for a sale because apples here are too pricey to use for baking most of the time, but every now and then, they’ll have a sale and I can pick up a pound for less than a dollar. Then it’s worth it. We have several servings of rhubard conserve in the freezer.
Richard Dee
I planted apple trees when we moved here. Now, ten years later, I’m just starting to get good harvests. This year was the best so far, my freezer also has plenty of stock for winter.