Plum Crum

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.

 

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.