Any kind of crumble be it damson, rhubarb, or apple crumble can be so delicious and also nutritious. The problem is that most people add far too much sugar to the fruit, loads more to the crumble and then even scatter it on top. This just creates a sickly unhealthy mess – loaded with sugar. Further, almost all recipes use just white flour which adds further to the unhealthyness of the dish. It doesn’t have to be like that, and it can still be very enjoyable without putting your long-term health at risk!
This recipe uses a mixture of whole rolled oats, wholemeal flour, ground almonds and hemp seeds. So it’s bursting with nutrition already. I’ve pared the sugar down to the perfect level – just sweet enough but not overly so. The margarine is also kept to a minimum, but with the addition of the ground almonds and hemp seeds, the crumble has a superb nuttiness to it.
You can make this pudding up and then freeze it as long as you cover it with cling film. You can buy compostable cling film now from Lakeland so not too environmentally harmful.
Any of the above fruits work, and of course you can mix it up a bit. Try adding in some blackberries with the apple, or do summer fruits, peaches, gooseberries etc.
I like to serve my damson rhubarb or apple crumble with custard. It’s dead easy to make great vegan custard with soya milk in the microwave. I’ll be posting a how to guide on that at some point. I find that whipping the custard mixture with a stick blender first makes it amazingly good and light and fluffy.
Tasty & Healthy Apple Crumble old
Equipment
- Large oval pie dish
- medium bowl
Ingredients
For fruit filling
- 650 g Bramley Apples
- 65 g Golden Caster Sugar
For crumble topping
- 150 g whole-wheat flour organic is best
- 50 g rolled porridge oats organic is best
- 75 g vegan margarine
- 70 g Soft Brown Sugar
- 20 g of hulled hemp seed
- 20 g of ground almonds
Instructions
Preparing the fruit filling
- Pre-heat the oven to 175° C Fan.
- Prepare the bramley cooking apples by washing it first then either peeling or de-coring it..
- cut into suitably small pieces – after slicing decoring - 2cm size pieces is about right.
- Place in a largish baking dish (I prefer Pyrex) and sprinkle with the golden caster sugar turn a few times with a spoon and set aside. Mine holds 3 litres
Making the crumble topping.
- Weigh in using a zeroable scale, the flour, oats and other ingredients into a large mixing bowl.
- Weigh in the margarine.
- Rub the flour, oats, seeds & nuts and margarine together until it looks crumbly and the margarine has been evenly dispersed through the flour. A pair of long dinner knives – one in each hand are good to start it off are good, then finish with the finger tips.
- Sprinkle the crumble topping evenly over the top of the fruit, using a fork to even out the distribution if necessary, but don't press it down.
- Cook in the oven for 35 - 40 minutes until lightly golden brown. If it looks like the fruit is not cooked, cover with aluminium foil to prevent it over browning on top.
- Allow to rest for 5 to 10 minutes before serving with warm custard, vegan ice cream, vegan single cream or all three!
Notes
- You can use any fruit - 600g of fruit is about right for the dish specified.
- Use as little sugar as possible - around 10% of the weight of the fruit is a good rule of thumb. You may need a little more for very tart fruit, and a little less for very sweet fruit - but for cooking apples, rhubarb, damsons & gooseberries - 10% is good.
- If the crumble starts to burn before the fruit looks to be cooked - cover with aluminium foil, and cook for another 5 minutes or so.
- Despite what thee say, you can easily freeze this uncooked for 6 months - just make sure you take it out far enough in advance to defrost and warm to room temperature before putting in the oven to cook.
- This is lovely with custard - see my frothed microwave custard recipe for simply the best fool proof custard!
