Grandma’s favourite… This is truly a simple pudding but it holds in its heart all that is good about England in winter.
for the crumble topping:
10 oz (280g) flour
5 oz (140g) butter, at room temperature
5 oz (140g) demerara sugar
for the filling:
about 3 large cooking apples
some sugar
about 5 cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
Put the flour in a bowl, then add the butter – if you cut it up into small pieces first, it makes life easier. Then using your fingertips, pick up a good pinch of flour and butter and rub them together between your fingers. Repeat until the mixture becomes finely combined, and is the texture of breadcrumbs. Then add the sugar and mix in thoroughly.
Peel and core the apples, and slice them thinly. Cook in a tiny splash of water for about 10-15 minutes, until they’re soft. Add some sugar if you need to sweeten it a little, but not too much – the crumble topping will add its own sweetness. Then add the cloves and cinnamon.
Lightly grease a dish and put in the apple mixture, then top with crumble – there should be a good inch or two (5cm for the metrically minded) of crumble on top. Bake in a moderate oven, gas mark 4 (180C, 350F) for 30 minutes, then whack up the heat to gas mark 7 (220C, 425F) for the last 10 minutes to brown the top. Serve with cream, icecream or just on its own. Delicious.
Alternative fillings:
Rhubarb: you’ll need four sticks of rhubarb, a teaspoon of ground ginger and a couple of dessertspoons of caster sugar. Simply chop the rhubarb roughly and put it in a pan with the sugar and ginger, then cook over a medium heat for about 10-15 minutes until the rhubarb has fallen apart a little, but not completely. Stir once or twice during cooking to make sure it doesn’t stick on the bottom of the pan.
