I don't bake sweet treats at home anywhere near as often I as should, which I supose makes the name of the blog a misnomer.

As Autumn hurries on whipped up by strong winds and driving rain, we find ourselves craving comfort food. Today faced with a pile of fresh eating apples and the blackberries that I strained our out of our blackberry vodka, I realised that I really needed to find a home for both. So here is a blackberry and apple crumble (or crisp). I have made this with a gluten free topping of course,
and have used a mixture of rice and maize flour, but you could add gluten free grain flakes for a bit of texture and vary the spices depending on the fruit.
Blackberry & Apple crumble
Ingredients
400g (4 small) dessert apples, peeled, cored and chopped.
100g blackberries
1 lemon - zest only
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Fruit method:
- Put the fruit in a pan with a splash of water (a tablespoon or so) and let simmer over a low heat for 5 minutes.
- Taste the fruit & sweeten with dk brown muscavado (turbinado sugar) or agave nectar if very tart.
- Add the zest and vanilla extract, stir through.
- Pour the fruit into a baking dish - I used several small dishes for individual portions but I guess that an 8" or 9" square ceramic dish would be fine.
Topping
90g (1/2 cup) rice flour
80g (1/2 cup) maize flour
115g (1/2 cup) castor sugar
90g (1/2 cup) dark muscavado sugar (turbinado sugar, I think)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
125g (1 stick) cold butter
Topping method
- weigh out flours and cinnamon, sieve together
- weight out sugars and stir into flour
- finely chop butter and add to flour mix
- rub in as if you were making pastry until you have a sticky bread crumb mix ( you can do this in a food processor).
- spoon the topping over the fruit in the baking dish creating a thick even layer.
Serve with whilst still warm just as it is or with yoghurt, cream, custard or ice cream.