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

Ingredients:

• 230g self raising flour
• Half a teaspoon of baking powder 
• 125g light muscavado sugar
• 3 over ripe bananas, peeled and mashed
• 85g glace cherries, cut into halves roughly
• 8 dessert spoons of pure orange juice
• 2 small eggs, beaten
• 150ml vegetable oil

Method:

Cooking:

Do let me know if you try this beauty for yourself. If you like bananas then this is a MUST!
Sophie

Would you believe that I’ve never cooked with pumpkin before? I really wanted to go wild this year so I bought two big ones then set about finding some recipes to tantalise my taste buds. This pumpkin tray bake recipe from BBC Good Food (called Halloween pumpkin cake) is quite simply delicious and hands down the best dessert I have ever made. I'd describe it as more of a moist tray bake with a zingy orange frosting or if served hot a hearty pudding that would work marvellously with custard. Put it this way, it's something I'll definitely be baking next year and the year after.

It's not often that I get baking these days so it was a real luxury to fill the house with the gorgeous smell of spices and orange from this bake. One mistake I did make was using a light soft cheese for the frosting, meaning that it did not set properly

Do you have some autumn baking favourites? I’m raring to try a ginger cake soon.

It is quite rare for me to get my bake on these days, since my metabolism has slowed down and reality has weighed in meaning that I actually do put weight on when I eat like a pig. When I was searching through the cupboard for something last week I remembered the jar of peanut butter I had sitting in there looking a little despondent. As a nut-hater is does sound a bit odd but I rather like a bit of peanut butter every now and again, but since we now don't keep bread in the house anymore (we'll only eat it) the preferred peanut butter sandwich was out of the question. While flicking through Lorraine Pascale's Fast, Easy Food recipe book I stumbled upon this peanut butter squares idea and HAD to make them. I substituted the dark for milk chocolate which did make them delightfully sickly-sweet and they did turn out gooier than expected but MMMMMM. At first I thought there wasn't much there but it soon became apparent that there was way too much for me to eat alone (husband had a couple of pieces then announced they were too unhealthy to have any more). Thankfully my family of gannets came to the rescue and saved me from the imminent binge.
Do you have food that you don’t like yet sometimes really fancy or is this just me?