We must have a little micro-climate round here, because our local brambles are ready before the brambles in the country. I don’t much like summer fruits, not even strawberries, and blackberries don’t usually get me excited. But on Friday, out with Babs on her new scooter in the park, we took a little detour to extend our walk and came across loads of brambles, quite loaded with fruit. There were some other people picking, and they offered us a bag when they heard us cooing over all the fruit, so we had fun collecting berries and trying to keep Babs from loading the bag with berries at doggie height.
Babs is such a parrot, and such a good girl; she kept checking with me: ‘How about this one?’, ‘Ooh, that’s a good one,’ and ‘That’s a big one?’. She insisted on carrying the bag (a little ziplock bag, no carry handles) home, and concentrated so hard on cradling it gently she squashed a lot of them in her arms, and she was rigid with excitement once we got home to see what we might do with them.
Sadly for her, as it was almost teatime, she didn’t get to see what I did with them – not til the next night, anyway, when she put far more away than I expected. Once I’d done the bath and Terry took her to read stories in the bedroom, I came downstairs to make crumble. Bur not just any old crumble, the Good Housekeeping Apple and Blackberry Crumble. Yummy.
Two things that made this superb – the crumble mixture is made with ground almonds* (I smashed up some flakes – better) and muscovado sugar; and the apples are pre-cooked in a frying pan with butter (I used salted – better). Yum. OK, three – I also added some porridge oats (whizzed down a bit, because that’s how we keep them in the cupboard for toddler/speedy porridge) and the oats/nuts combo added some valuable texture to the treacly yumminess.
Terry made some custard (the real kind, by Bird’s), and we had crumble and custard for pudding. Babs had it cold for pudding the next day, and wolfed, and kept wolfing. We had the rest of the 3lb pie dish that night, cold, and it might almost have been better.
And it was quite so yummy that I made another one for tea tonight.
Apples…
Oven-ready…
Oh yeah, that’s done.
* And I hate anything with ground almonds/almond essence – can’t bear frangipani, marzipan or bakewell tart, won’t go near amaretto, the foul substance.
Tags: apple crumble, baking, blackberries, bramble, crumble, dessert, pudding
