Crumbly.

I’m big on baking. From clove-spiced cookies, through churros, to challenging Challah bread*, I have at the very least some acquaintance with the earliest entries in the alphabetical cookbook. So continuing along the theme of ‘C’, I decided I would have a crack at a crumble. 

Now, I hadn’t made a crumble since I was a boy (girl). But even then my ingredients were home-sourced. Just as I had done for a Year 4 Home Economics lesson (all girls private schools like to get you baking skilfully long before calorie concerns become a ‘thing’), I made the trip to my grandfather’s orchard in leafy Maidenhead and pulled from his tree some large, and largely un-worm-infested, cooking apples. 

"Incredibly wasteful peeling technique", Mark, Peep Show (Xmas Special, 2003)

It’s fair to say that I had plucked a quantity sufficient to tackle the Industrial Pudding Challenge round on Masterchef, or, to keep this massively contemporary, enough to make 24 mini crumbles on a Bake Off ‘technical’. Of the 50 apples I’d procured, I ended up only needing 15, which I peeled and sliced before popping into a shallowly watered and sugared saucepan for softening and sweetening up. That process took only 3.5 minutes. Just so you know, the bulk of the softening and sweetening occurs during the bake itself, which can take as long as half an hour. 

Pan of Action

Like any experimental write-up, I suppose I should acknowledge what I could have done differently. So here goes. I wish I had had some on-hand cinnamon to give this dessert an autumnal streak. Unfortunately the only spices I could find in my cupboard were some Schwartz pots from the last millennium. And after an un-live-down-able incident that I can only describe as Fish Cake Gate 2007, I wasn’t confident about experimenting with any ageing gustatory accessories. And neither, I was vociferously reminded, were my target audience. If it's not already clear, Fish Cake Gate refers to something that was designed to be a sweet dish. Namely, a Victoria sponge. 

OK, not thousands of years old, but these spices pre-date even my 'rebel' phase. Is it wrong that I put these back in the cupboard? 

I recently got my nails done and given their length, the creation of the crumble topping was a little fraught. Butter and sugar got up to no good behind and between my talons, but with some experienced thumb-and-palm-oriented movements, my crumble topping was hand-milled to perfection. 

Crummy

I’ll be honest, there’s a reason why they task Year 4 Home Economics students [children? pupils?] with an apple crumble and not the Accursed Challah* (which I think you find on your 'Unseen' Paper for Home Economics A-level). A crumble has at most three actual processes, none of them requiring skill (adult supervision quite another matter, however—watching the eight-year-old me struggle with a heavy colander of freshly-boiled apple quarters could, and did, invite some intervention). 

Anyway, cue photos. Maybe for the next blog I will re-attempt a Challah. Oh I bet you can’t wait. 

Poured into Pyrex

Sprinkling on gold dust

Patting down the gold dust with a spoon (will live to regret not creating a more mountainous crumble landscape)

Bae in the oven

Fin.

*If you were wondering throughout, "What's a Challah?" Look no further:

An aspirational baked-good. [Not own work.]