Throw away your other recipes—here’s the perfect fruit crumble (2024)
As you might know if you peruse this website regularly, I am a big fan of pie and pie-related things. Under the latter category: the fruit crumble. There’s really no better way to use up your blueberry-picking bounty or the multitude of apples from that recent orchard excursion. There are as many crumble recipes, though, as there are pear varietals: Yours is probably great, because it’s a crumble, but what about one that’s really exemplary?
Search no longer, because here it is. It comes to us from Shelley Young, founder of The Chopping Block, a cooking school and retail store in Chicago. Shelley is friends with my husband. And she’s a really good friend to have, the kind who brings astonishingly good white wine from Aldi for dinner, as well as desserts that grown-ass adults will wrestle over.
The last time we saw Shelley, she brought this amazing blueberry crumble, so I soon hounded her for the recipe. As gracious as ever, she not only provided it, she tossed in a few tips she’s amassed over the years to make her crumble stand out amongst all crumbles (she calls it a crisp, though; I’m calling it a crumble).
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First off: ingredients. She says she likes to use equal amounts of white and brown sugar in the topping—brown sugar for richness, white sugar for crispy-crunch. She also sways between oatmeal and nuts: “I don’t always do oatmeal, I just like the texture sometimes. Same thing with nuts, sometimes I use them sometimes I don’t.”
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Once you’ve mixed everything together for the topping, make it in the food processor to keep the butter as cold as possible. “That way it doesn’t turn to mush from my warm hands but keeps more of a crumbly texture.” She likes to “squeeze the topping in my hands quickly to create big clumpy chunks; I think everyone likes those.” Then she places these clumps around instead topping the whole pan with the filling, which leaves openings between the topping for the steam to escape and keeps “the fruit filling from bubbling all over the topping and making it soggy.”
Finally, pay close attention to the ratio of filling to topping. Shelley usually likes about 2 to 3 inches of fruit at the most in the bottom of the pan. That ratio “keeps the filling from bubbling over the top of the crispy topping so it stays crunchy, but also because people like a good amount of topping to their fruit in my experience.”
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The crumble Shelley brought to our dinner was blueberry, and she credited its deliciousness to an exceptionally great blueberry crop. Yeah, but it was also about the topping, and the cooking method. I tried to replicate it with some blueberries, raspberries, and apples, but take it from me: Everything’s just going to taste like blueberries anyway. Still, it tasted awesome and everybody in my office devoured it gleefully. I bet this would also be great with any type of pears, maybe dotted with some dried apricots. Really, I can’t wait to put together a multitude of different fruit combos, as long as they’re baked beneath this topping.
Fresh Fruit Crumble
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Makes 6–8 servings
For the topping
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
7 Tbsp. unsalted butter, chilled, cut into small pieces
1 cup chopped nuts and/or oatmeal (optional)
For the filling
6 cups fruit, peeled, pitted, or cored (apples, peaches, pears, berries, etc., or a combination) and cut into 1- or 2-inch chunks
1/4–1/2 cup sugar
3-4 Tbsp. cornstarch or flour
1/2 lemon, freshly squeezed
Combine flour, sugars, spices, and salt in a food processor or large mixing bowl. Add butter and process until crumbly. Add nuts and combine briefly. Place in the refrigerator until ready to use.
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Combine filling ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly mixed. Transfer to a large buttered baking dish so the fruit is arranged in a thin layer.
Sprinkle topping evenly over fruit. Bake at 350 degrees F until filling is bubbly and top is brown, about 40 minutes. (Shelley says once the filling is hot in the center, “that’s how you know it’s done.”) Serve warm or at room temperature with whipped cream or ice cream.
How long will Apple Crumble keep for? This apple crumble will keep quite happily in the fridge for three days. Reheat in a microwave or put the whole thing in the oven on a low temp to heat through. You can also freeze the whole crumble before you bake it or once its cooked and will be fine in the freezer for 4 months.
You can freeze Blackberry and Apple Crumble baked and unbaked. To freeze baked crumble, allow it to cool completely. Wrap it in freeze safe cling film to keep it airtight, then pop it into a freezer bag and label the bag with the date and contents.
Put 175g plain flour and 110g golden caster sugar in a bowl with a good pinch of salt. Slice in 110g cold butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like moist breadcrumbs. Shake the bowl and any big bits will come to the surface – rub them in.
They're supposed to be chunky and craggy, with big pieces of crumble on top. By freezing your topping, it makes it harden just slightly and that means the texture will be nice and crispy when it's cooked.” To do this properly, you first need to make sure that the topping is still a little lumpy.
Not enough butter, and your topping will be a dry, floury mess. Too much butter and your topping will become a greasy blob or disappointingly soggy. Some recipes will ask you to cut in cold butter along with your dry ingredients, resulting in pea-size pieces that are sprinkled across the hot fruit filling.
The main reason your crumble topping isn't crunchy is probably because you haven't used Demerara sugar. Although, it could also be that you've got your topping ingredient quantities wrong: either too much or not enough flour and butter alongside the sugar.
Apple Crumble also makes a great breakfast. Either you can microwave it, which is our usual method, or you can cover with foil and reheat at 350°f / 180°c in the oven until warmed through. Usually we tend to just warm up individual servings as needed though in the microwave. Apple crumble is also amazing cold!
If you don't have an oven in your kitchen, no worries—you can have your apple crumble and eat it, too! Options are given for a raw, oil-free crumble and a more traditional-style cooked crumble served with a filling that also has options to use water or oil.
HOW TO REHEAT LEFTOVER BERRY CRUMBLE: You can reheat the Berry Crumble by placing it into a preheated 350 degree oven in the ramekins or baking pan. Depending on the amount that you are reheating it will take between 10 and 20 minutes.
Serve cold, room temperature, or re-warmed in a low oven for 20 minutes. Using a 9x13-inch pan: Increase the fruit to 10 to 11 cups, adjusting the other filling ingredients to match. Increase all the crumble topping ingredients by half (1 1/2 cups flour, etc.), except for the baking powder.
Apple crisp is a dessert made with a streusel topping. In the US, it is also called apple crumble, a word which refers to a different dessert in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Ingredients usually include cooked apples, butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and often oats and brown sugar, ginger, and/or nutmeg.
I had no idea one could make a crumble topping for a berry crisp with olive oil instead of butter – I mean, did you? – and I could not be happier with my discovery.
Why are Crumbl cookies so popular? It might be due to dessert trends, the popularity of chocolate chip cookies and Crumbl's minimalist yet polished aesthetic.
A well-made crumb should be firm yet tender, and chewy, with big chunks—like granola. The best way to achieve this is to use cold cubed butter. Using room-temperature or melted butter will cause the topping to spread out and flatten when it bakes, rather than standing pert and perky.
Often this happens if the crumb topping is over-mixed or if the butter was much too hot. Over-mixing will leave you with a pasty, batter-like mixture rather than the crumbly topping you are aiming for. Using very hot butter can cause the sugars to melt, leaving you with a greasy and not crumbly mixture.
The main reason your crumble topping isn't crunchy is probably because you haven't used Demerara sugar. Although, it could also be that you've got your topping ingredient quantities wrong: either too much or not enough flour and butter alongside the sugar.
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