Apple, Pear and Plum Crumble with Hazelnuts
A favourite childhood dessert is given a makeover!Use hazelnuts without skins otherwise you will need to remove them once roasted - this is fairly easy to do but just a bit time-consuming. Tip all the hot hazelnuts onto a clean tea towel and rub them all over hard to make the skins flake off. Proceed with the recipe from there.
Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 200 g ripe pears I used conference pears
- 300 g plums stones removed
- 100 g apples I used a mixture of eating and cooking apples
- 2 heaped tbsp muscovado sugar
- 165 g plain flour
- 80 g cold butter cubed
- 80 g sugar caster or golden caster sugar
- 80 g blanched hazelnuts
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F. Start by prepping the fruit - peel the pears and apples and cut them into small bite-size pieces. Unless you're using cooking apples, neither will lose their shapes as they cook, so they need to be small to eat easily. Chop the plums into quarters depending on size and dispose of the stones.
- Put all the fruit in a large bowl and stir in the muscovado sugar. Leave to macerate as you make the topping.
- In a mixing bowl, combine the flour and cold cubed butter - rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs. Stir in the sugar.
- Place the hazelnuts on a small baking tray and roast them in the oven for 5 minutes. Check them to see if they are taking colour - if they are golden brown then they are ready, if not return them to the oven for another minute or so. They do not need long to become flavourful.
- Either using a pestle and mortar or on a chopping board with the back of a sharp knife, crush half of the hazelnuts into rough chunks.
- Fill a high-sided baking dish (approx. 20 x 30cm) with the macerated fruit. Top with the hazelnuts then the crumble topping. Place the crumble in the oven and bake for 45 minutes until the topping is lightly golden and the juices are bubbling over. Leave to cool slightly as you make custard! If you're not feeling in the mood for custard (which is surely never?) then it's delicious with crème fraiche or ice cream.