I bought a punnet of plums as part of Lidl's special weekend offers last week. I had managed to eat 2/5th of the punnet with roughly 600g remaining. They weren't that great. Edible but not really sweet enough to want to eat a lot of them. I sadly finished the last batch of freezer pear crumble (from last year and I wasn't ill!) so wanted to make some more.
Googled plum crumble and found 2 recipes I liked the sound of so used:
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/ to prepare my plums and http://www.theguardian.com Nigel Slater's oat crumble topping.
Ingredients:
Fruit base
600g plums (weighed first, then washed, halved and stoned)
50g golden granulated sugar
1tsp cinnamon (a tame tsp, not heaped)
1tsp plain flour (slightly more than the cinnamon)
3 dsp of water (or 2tbsp of water)
For the crumble topping:
150g plain flour
80g butter (unsalted)
50g ground almonds (I pestle and mortared some flaked almonds)
70g golden granulated sugar
75g porridge oats with wheatbran
Method:
1. Arrange plums in a ovenproof dish. The recipes didn't say how to arrange, skin side up or down? I thought skin down would be better so the crumble would have a flat surface to sit on top.
I weighed the sugar in a jar and added the cinnamon and flour and shook it up. With a spoon, I gently sprinkled the mixture on top. Then I put some water in a bowl and sprinkled the water on top.
2. Rub the butter and the flour together with your fingertips to resemble breadcrumbs.
3. Switch on oven 200 C. I put on my oven just before I ground up my flaked almonds with the pestle and mortar.
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| TL: "Breadcrumbs" TR: Oats BL Sugar BR: Ground almonds |
4. Mix up the crumble ingredients and sprinkle on top of the plums until they are covered. Bake for 30-40mins until golden brown.
I could smell burning at the 25min mark. I have a fan oven so will turn it down a notch next time. It tasted fine but just keep checking on it! After the 25mins, I turned my oven down 30 degrees and baked it a bit longer. Then I totally switched off and let it bake in the residual heat.
Serve with custard! It's got to be custard!
This Alpro stuff tastes better than that Ambrosia stuff!
Makes 6 generous portions or 8 sensible portions. I froze them individually.
Review:
Plums were quite tart. It was nice. I wouldn't put more sugar in as the custard is sweet enough. I will veganise it next time by using Pure sunflower spread. It felt like there was more crumble to fruit ratio but then again I didn't have the quantities the recipe required (or a big enough dish!) I liked the pink/purple colour. You could pretend it was rhubarb crumble as it has that sour quality. I might be braver with the cinnamon next time.
