From the Orchard - Jen Beachey
There is something special about Winter in the country.
The lighter, brighter, warmer seasons often bring with them very long to-do lists; the fruit trees, the paddocks, cutting grass, calving, lambing, the list goes on! Winter is a glorious time when you can literally put your feet up in front of the fire and relax.
As we know in the country there are always things on the list to do, but after months of preserving fruit, making jam and storing the cupboards to the brim of home grown fruit and vegetables, we definitely owe it to ourselves to have a well-deserved break. Now the buds have started to pop on all those gorgeous fruit trees it is the best time of year to get yourself organised for Spring!
This year we noticed the hard work that our bees put in to our orchard and for the first time in many years we had such an abundance of beautiful apples, pears, nashi pears and blood plums.
This is the time of year I love to put them into play in the kitchen. Having a jar of home grown fruit, bottled at its prime brings back the feeling of summer as soon I open the jar. While the sun has started to appear, most of us still want to be in doors as soon as the sun goes down, so having a quick and easy hot dessert handy is a great way to follow dinner.
I have made this crumble with pretty much everything that is around the house. If you have apples that are getting a bit soft in the fruit bowl or have some frozen berries in the freezer use those.
For this recipe you need about 700 grams or 2 cups of stewed fruit (I use a 1 litre baking dish). You can combine apples and pears or apples and plums or mix up apples and some frozen berries (raspberries are always delicious with plums and apples) Even if you don’t have a store of anything, you can mix a can of peaches with some fresh apples and it does the trick.
If you are stewing the apples just before you make the crumble, add a knob of butter while it is still hot and if it is for grownups you can also add a drop of brandy.
Winter puddings should be comforting and easy. I usually make mine when I am cooking dinner while the oven is on. Then when the dinner comes out, the pudding/dessert goes in.
Even though I am all about doing things the easy way, try and resist the temptation of using the food processor for the topping. Chunky as opposed to fine crumbs is what makes it crunchy. The cooking time will also vary depending on the fruit you choose. For berries you only need to cook it for 15 minutes at 200C. For larger or more substantial fruit such as apricots or apples and plums, cook at 200.C for 30 minutes.
For the crumble topping Ingredients:
½ cup Brown sugar 1 tsp Baking powder
50 gm Desiccated coconut
1 tsp Cinnamon
100 gm Butter
100 gm plain flour
Mix sugar, cinnamon, coconut and baking powder in a dish. In a separate bowl add butter to flour and crumble the butter between your fingers to form pea sized pieces. Mix in sugar, cinnamon, coconut and baking powder keeping it loose but well mixed.
In a buttered baking dish spoon in stewed fruit. Strew topping onto fruit taking it to the edges. Place in hot oven for 30 minutes or until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling at the sides.
Serve with a good vanilla ice-cream and/or vanilla custard.