It wouldn't be autumn without going blackberry picking - the annual foraging tradition loved by so many. An apple and blackberry crumble is the classic way to use them and I admit to having neglected this some years, more through missing the boat rather than not feeling like it. I come from a dynasty of crumble makers. Us women have produced hundreds of these over the years and yet most have fallen short of their full glory. There's nothing worse than a crumble which disappoints. With my complete lack of instinct when it comes to cooking, baking and anything to do with food assembly, I always rely on a recipe to guide me through choppy waters. I wince when I say that my previous go-to recipe was a 'healthy' option which not only failed in texture and taste but really offered little in the way of healthy benefits either. It was time to try something else. Google offered me a recipe from delicious magazine which looked suitably different and I gave it a try. Actually I'm going to be searching there for lots of recipes in future as they have a lot of mouthwatering dishes over there - plus they are easy to print off.

Is it ok to make it three weeks on the trot? Because that's what your girl did. Did I mention I love desserts? Here's my slightly tweaked recipe from the original:

Ingredients:
Approx 1100g bramley apples
250g or thereabouts carefully rinsed and sorted to ensure no stems, cobwebs or creepy crawlies have joined the party
3 teaspoons of cornflour
70g caster sugar
240g plain flour
150g unsalted butter cut into cubes. I prefer to use this from the fridge as if it gets too warm you make paste.
120g demerara sugar

Method:
Pop the flour in a large mixing bowl along with a pinch of salt and rub in the butter a few cubes at a time. Keeping this cool will help. Once it's fairly fine, don't worry about the odd buttery lump, mix in the demerara sugar and set aside. Pop the oven on to about 160 oC for a fan oven.
Stir together the cornflower and caster sugar in a bowl.
You'll need to work through the apples quickly as they start to turn brown very quickly. I use a vegetable peeler and a small knife to peel and remove the core, and keep them chunky before slicing them at the last moment and adding the blackberries. Sprinkle over the cornflour and sugar mix and stir around the fruit. Grease a chosen baking dish, I prefer a deeper one than too shallow as the fruit always cooks down and if too thinly placed you hardly end up with anything.
Stir round the fruit again then lay it out in the dish, even it up roughly then gently spoon the topping over. Pop on a tray with a teflon sheet as the fruit can bubble up and escape during cooking.

I check mine after around 25 minutes at which point you can tell if it's looking 'perfect' ie golden-ish with a few blobs of oozy fruit round the edge - which would be done or if it still looks much like when you put it in - in which case try again in 10 minutes.

They stay hot for ages so no rush to eat but ours was demolished with a shocking volume of custard.
Even C agreed this crumble recipe was an absolute triumph. Super buttery with the sugary crunch and the syrupy fruit wasn't overly sweet. The original recipe called for more caster but we preferred it with less.

This is one I'll be returning to over and over again. It's hard to say how many official portions it makes but I'd suggest 6 for gluttons like myself. Plus it's pretty much a breakfast dish too, so make a weekend of it.

The blackberries are past their best now, we did gather a small handful for a pie but there were slim pickings indeed.

Have you been crumbling?

Take,
Sophie

Crab apples look decidedly ugly and unappetizing. As someone who operates a blanket policy of hating small fruit, I would automatically have ignored crab apples even if they did look like perfect little examples. There's something good you can make with these unloved fruits, crab apple jelly!
There's a bountiful supply of them in hedgerows and just alongside roads (presumably where drivers have lobbed apple cores and a gnarly tree has grown) although of course, there's ever so many more out of reach than you can collect. On our second trip out to forage some we found the wind had taken most out of the trees and left them on the floor like giant perilous marbles - I nearly went base over apex to my horror.


We vowed to make use of some this year. Our first haul was decent, alongside our blackberry haul so C decided to make a crab apple and blackberry batch as well as a spiced crab apple batch.
Both have set perfectly and I find myself seeking it out to eat with chicken (sadly our redcurrants didn't materialise this year). They are much sweeter than expected and for that reason I think C will give it a wide berth by I don't mind. To be honest they would work as a sweet treat too, like little jellies as part of a dessert or on toast. Yum.
They both taste delicious and very different. So cheap to make too, just the price of sugar and a few store cupboard spices. We save jars and bottles furiously and acquire them from others too and have a decent preserving kit now.

On our second trip out to forage some we found the wind had taken most out of the trees and left them on the floor like giant perilous marbles - I nearly went base over apex to my horror.

There are so many varieties to make with crab apple as the base. Ones with herbs in, rowan, haw, blackberries... It does seem to be quite adaptable. It's not something you hear much about now but we're firmly set on foraging for treats. I'll be sharing some more of our makes in posts to come.

Take care,
Sophie

In accordance with my resolution to waste less I had to come up with a plan to make use of half a box of apples. My grandmother decided to buy several family members rather large boxes of coxes. One of those presents the sender is buying because that's more what they want to give as opposed to what the receiver would like. We don't like coxes (and nor does anyone else) so they've been something of a chore to plough through but as they're rapidly heading towards 'past their best' I wanted to use them up before being tempted to bin them. I chose to make another batch of ginger apple jam but this time with lots more apple in ratio to the ginger. Three and a half jars made. That should last me a while.
Am I getting the hang of using up things? I hope so.
Sophie