Any kind of crumble is good, but this tasty & healthy apple crumble is not just delicious but also nutritious. The problem is that most people add far too much sugar to the fruit, loads more to the crumble. Then they even scatter more sugar on top – barmy or what. This just creates a sickly unhealthy mess – over-loaded with sugar. Further, almost all the recipes I’ve seen 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 risking your long-term health!
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. Sure it’s a bit more expensive and has a few more ingredients, but it’s far more nutritious and tasty than your bog standard “crumble”!
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.
Many fruits work, and of course you can mix it up a bit – this one is just apple. You can try adding in some blackberries with the apple, or do summer fruits, peaches, gooseberries using the same topping etc.
I like to serve my tasty & healthy 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 – light and fluffy.
Tasty & Healthy Apple Crumble
Equipment
- Large oval pie dish
- medium bowl
Ingredients
For fruit filling
- 650 g bramley cooking apples
- 65 g Golden Caster Sugar
For crumble topping
- 125 g whole-wheat flour organic is best
- 75 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
- 1 teasp ground cinnamon optional, but I love it.
- 10 g milled flax seed optional but adds extra nutrition
Instructions
Preparing the fruit filling
- Pre-heat the oven to 180°C Fan.
- Prepare the , cooking apples (bramley preferably) washing it first then removing the core and slicing it into 2 to 3cm pieces. I prefer not to peel them, but some do.....
- arrange the fruit evenly in a large oven proof dish - oval pyrex is traditional, but not mandatory.....
- sprinkle with soft brown sugar or golden caster sugar turn over a few times with a spoon and set aside. My pyrex dish holds 3 litres as a guide. You can add a few cloves......
Making the crumble topping.
- Using a zeroable scale, weigh in the margarine, flour, oats and other ingredients into a large mixing bowl.
- 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 however - but 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 "they" 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!
