Mum's Crumble

I started this blog for several reasons, detailed in the first post. Starting U!C coincided with something else to do with baking in my life; I started keeping a recipe book. Until now, I’ve merely collected recipes, and barely used them; tatty print outs stuffed uncaringly into a folder and all but abandoned, to be skipped over to find my favoured regular use recipes; those I should really get around to remembering anyway. Then I decided to start the book. I think it will be a wonderful heirloom to pass to child, if I ever have any, or a relative, at least. Or someone who likes to bake who is lucky enough to know me. And who likes the colour pink, since I’m writing in it in my favourite pink pen. It’s quite exciting, creating an archive like that. It’s still mostly empty, since I only write in recipes I’ve bonded with; ones that are tried, tested, retried, retried again, failed a couple of times and then baked right over and over.

This recipe is going in there as soon as I’m done posting it up. What better to put in a recipe book than a recipe from my mother?

Mummy and I have been being ever so countrified of late. We’re going blackberrying tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it! There’s nothing like starting autumn with a trip out to collect delicious blackberries for a crumble. However we started about ten days ago, when we collected wild Yellowgages from the orchard in our village. If you don’t know what a Yellowgage is, here’s a photo:

They are a type of plum, also known as a Golden Plum. You can sometimes find them in supermarkets for an absolute fortune. Of course, those are cultivated, and much larger than the little wild ones… however, we did pick about 4lb worth, so that made up for it!

Next were the first of the apples from the orchard. They are all such antiquated varieties we simply can’t tell by looking at them which are ‘eaters’ and which are ‘cookers’!

A few days later we raided the more traditional plum trees at the end of our road. We’re lucky to live in a very rural setting!

After this ‘scrumping’ adventure, we decided to make a Crumble with some of the red plums and the apples. And this was when Mummy shared her super simple, super delicious crumble recipe.

Mum’s Crumble with Wild Plums and Scrumped Apples

Ingredients:
4oz Golden Caster Sugar
4-5oz Plain Flour
4oz Unsalted Butter, chilled
Plums and Apples- We used 4 medium-large apples and about 10 small plums, but it depends on the size of your fruit and the size of your baking dish.
Extra sugar (optional)

Preheat your oven to about 180/160/Gas Mark 4.

Chop your butter into cubes.

Pour sugar over butter, and sieve in 4oz of flour.

Rub together until the mixture has a uniform, crumbly texture. Do not knead as you would to make cookie dough. If the pieces are too big, or it clumping too much, add more flour. About 1oz should be plenty. Be careful not to over work it, though if this happens you will just have an ugly and still delicious crumble. Hey ho. That’s what we’re all about here. Ours was a little on the ugly side, or should I say the sexy homemade looking side, oh baby oh baby.

Peel and core your apples. Stone your plums. Chop your apples into slices and layer into the dish. Intersperse with torn pieces of plum.

If you are using eating apples rather than cooking apples, or if you don’t know what you have, sprinkle about two tablespoons of sugar over the fruit. This will mean the crumble will be sweet, but the cooking apples will have a sour deliciousness to them still.

Pour over the crumble, ensuring you have an even coating and all the fruit is covered over.

Bake in the middle of the over for 25-35 minutes.

Serve while still warm with ice cream, cream or custard.

Unfortunately, I was so goshdarn hungry for crumble come eating time, I forgot to take a photo of it when we got it out of the oven. It looked AMAZING. And it tasted FABULOUS. If you use eating apples, they will go very very soft in the oven. As it was, it turned out we had a mix, the plum and eaters were all melty, whilst the cookers had an amazing sour bite to them. What a combo~
I know I'll be making another one of these, oh, tomorrow, but this time with blackberries. The crumble topping can be applied to any fruit! Aren't I good to you, dear internet?

To Simon, With Love

Dear Internet; how have you been? Me? Oh I’m just peachy keen, thanks for asking. Where have I been? I’ve been in lame-not-posting town, that’s where! And then I went on a little jaunt, oh yes! But I am back now, and I have lots of bakes to share with you. Are you ready?

Now, I did some baking while I was away, and a couple of bake lessons for my kitchen-shy pal Pam, and particularly considering the oven we were using (which doesn’t believe in cooking anything. EVER) we did exceptionally well! I intend to fully write up those bakes soon, but in the interim, Dear Darling Simon asked that I posted a recipe for him, so he could make cupcakes for this weekend. So, consciously curbing my hyperbole, and, alas, omitting images, here are my White Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Vanilla Butter Cream!

White Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Makes approx 16 regular sizes cupcakes

225g golden caster sugar
225g unsalted butter (room temperature)
1tsp vanilla extract
4 Free Range Eggs (room temperature)
225g Self raising flour
White chocolate chips.

Preheat oven to 180c (160c fan assisted).

Cream the butter and sugar together. Once combined, mix in the vanilla.

Beat in the eggs. The mix will look curdled and disgusting, but fear not! From ugliness, comes deliciousness. Beat this mix fairly vigorously to encourage air into the blend.

Mix in the flour and chocolate chips until the mixture is pale in colour and even in consistency.

2/3 fill your muffin cases, and bake for 13-15 minutes, checking at 13.


Vanilla Butter Cream

113g Unsalted butter
1tsp Vanilla extract
250g Icing sugar
1tbsp milk/single cream

Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl.

Add the butter and vanilla and cream together until the mixture is dry and almost even in consistency.

Add the dash of a milk or cream and mix thoroughly.

If the mixture gets too wet, add more sugar, and more milk/cream if it still to dry.

Decorate as you please!


And because I think this would be great, an alternative topping for you!


White Chocolate Ganache

227g White chocolate (good quality (Menier/Green and Blacks etc))
180ml Double cream
28g Butter

Break up the chocolate into small pieces and set aside in a mixing bowl.

Heat the cream and butter in a saucepan over a medium heat, stirring as you go.

Bring the mixture to the boil and immediately pour over the chocolate. Let this mixture stand for a few minutes to make the chocolate melt, then beat vigorously with a whisk. This will make the mixture thicken.

Refridgerate for about an hour, and then the mixture can be piped. If you wish to spread the mixture onto the cupcakes, let it come back to near room temperature before you try.

Hope that helps, Simon dear!