Emergency apple crumble

This is the crumble I make every time a friend has a baby! I drop around a bag of the crumble topping, a tin of apple (or pear) and some delicious thick cream.

Credit: Adam Liaw

• serves

  4

• prep

  10 minutes

• cook

  15 minutes

• difficulty

  Easy

It’s beyond easy to make, super-easy to cook and store the leftover raw crumble in the freezer. And, look... when you’re making breast milk and recovering from giving birth, there’s something so restoring about the delightful, effortless crumble. I call it my “Emergency Crumble” because I always have a ziplock bag of this in my own freezer in case an emergency strikes and I need dessert in less than 15 minutes! Oh - and for SURE this works on fresh apple! I love fresh cooked apple. Happy to do it that way too.

Ingredients

• 825 g can sliced apples (see Notes)
• fresh cream and/or vanilla ice-cream, to serve

Crumble

• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla paste
• 2 tbsp sour cream
• 2 tbsp iced water
• 200 g cold unsalted butter, chopped, plus extra for greasing
• 400 g plain flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 100 g soft dark brown sugar (or coconut sugar or demerara sugar)
• 100 g white sugar 

Instructions

1. For the crumble, place the egg yolks, vanilla paste, sour cream and iced water in a jug and whisk with a fork to combine well. Place the remaining crumble ingredients in a food processor and blitz for 30 seconds, pouring over the egg mixture as you go, until the crumble is uniform in colour. Be careful not to over-mix.
2. Preheat the grill to medium. Grease an oven-proof gratin dish with a little butter.
3. Drain the tinned fruit and spread over the base of the greased dish. If you dig cinnamon, sprinkle some extra over the apple. Top the fruit with as much crumble mixture as looks right. (Usually when I make this I use ¼ - ⅓ of the total mixture.) Store the remaining crumble mixture in 2 sandwich-sized ziplock bags, label them (this is important!!) and pop them in the freezer for an emergency.
4. Place the gratin dish under the grill and cook for 15 minutes or until golden brown, toasty and yummy. Serve hot with cream and/or ice cream.

Notes

• When your “emergency” arises, you can cook the crumble while it’s still frozen.

• Instead of canned apples you could of course use fresh apples. Use a mix of 6 – 8 tart green apples and sweet fuji apples cooked down with the juice of 1 orange and 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon. 

Photography by Adam Liaw.

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Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.

It’s beyond easy to make, super-easy to cook and store the leftover raw crumble in the freezer. And, look... when you’re making breast milk and recovering from giving birth, there’s something so restoring about the delightful, effortless crumble. I call it my “Emergency Crumble” because I always have a ziplock bag of this in my own freezer in case an emergency strikes and I need dessert in less than 15 minutes! Oh - and for SURE this works on fresh apple! I love fresh cooked apple. Happy to do it that way too.