I was arrogant enough to attempt a crumble without a recipe. After all, it's just some sugared apples, with a topping of flour, butter and sugar. Dump one on top of the other, stick the mess into a hot oven and take it out when you think it's done, right?
Wrong.
What I got was undercooked apples under soggy coat of sugary flour. It was edible but acted more as a topping to ice cream, rather than the intended reverse. I decided to give the crumble a bit more respect next time around.
Apple crumbles have an unmistakably British association for me. Never a fan of fruit-heavy desserts, I was first converted to the crumble by a London flatmate's girlfriend. Every once in a while she would effortlessly pull together a giant pan of the stuff in what seemed like seconds. We ate it for 'pudding' at the end of our Sunday dinners with vanilla custard out of a carton. Another friend worked at the Harrods food hall and if I dropped by at the end of his shift, one or two apple and blueberry crumbles would find their way into my bag.
I wanted to somehow recreate those two memories. Adding berries to the apples was a no-brainer. It brightens up the filing and makes it more interesting. (Thank you Harrods!) I then looked around for a fool-proof topping recipe. I'm pleased that I was able to find it on that side of the pond - in the Guardian.
Felicity Cloake is a recipe tester and developer at the Guardian's 'Word of Mouth' blog. I found it recently when searching for another English recipe, and became a fan immediately. For each project she consults the who's who of British cookbook authors and combines the best features of each into her final result. Essentially, she did all of the legwork for me, and all I had to do was follow her recipe, and enjoy the best (out of two) crumble I ever made!
