Strawberry and Apple Crumble

Note: I actually wrote this post months and MONTHS ago, and was just waiting on getting photos downloaded to my laptop.  Since that is clearly not happening, have a recipe! It was great, though the crumble topping was a bit heavier than I'd prefer.

One of the many, many reasons I don't often make dessert to eat at home is that with just the two of us, pies and cakes end up going bad before they get eaten.  Enter personal sized deserts! They're like the personal pan pizza of desserts! Ramekins are so handy.


Strawberry and Apple Crumble
2 sweet red apples
half pint frozen strawberries*
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup white flour
1/3 cup oatmeal
5-6 T brown sugar
1/3 cup butter
1-2 t vanilla essence
ground cinnamon, ginger and cloves to taste

1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Peel and core apples, chop into small (1-2cm) segments.
3. Place apples in a small sauce pan and just cover with water.
4. Simmer until soft - 5-10 minutes.
5. Drain apples and mix with cinnamon, caster sugar, and slightly thawed strawberries (chopped into small chunks).
6. Combine flour, oatmeal, brown sugar and spices in a bowl to start crumble.
7. Melt butter in microwave (~30 seconds), mix in vanilla and stir.
8. Mix butter mixture and dry crumble ingredients with a fork until well combined.
9. Grease the inside of 4 ramekins, then spoon in apple/strawberry mixture, covering with crumble.
10. Bake ~25 minutes.
11. Allow to cool slightly before eating. Can also be refrigerated and served cold.

Recommend serving with vanilla ice cream.

* Frozen strawberries:  I recently found some nice, ripe strawberries on sale so I bought a few pints and froze them.  Wash and hull strawberries, then place them into a freezer safe container (I use a ziploc bag and remove the air) with a teaspoon or so of sugar.  This recipe, of course, would also be good with fresh strawberries.

This recipe would also be great for making a full sized crumble, but you'd need to adjust the proportions - for a regular sized pie dish, you'd want probably about 8 apples and maybe double the crumble recipe.  Lots of other fruits can be used as well - peaches, rhubarb, any kind of berries, etc.

Another nifty trick, for a lighter crumble, use cold butter and mix with a hand blender instead of using melted butter.  Either way, it's delicious.