Argh, it's snowmaggedon! Well, it was. Briefly.
The attitude towards snow is always hilarious, particularly in London where the city seems to grind to a halt at the mere sighting of a few flakes.
Unlike the snowmaggedons of previous years, this year's big snowfall, in London at least, was at the weekend. We went out for dinner with my parents on Saturday night and by the time we left the restaurant, the public transport system had almost completely shut down and cars were crawling along the roads through several inches of snow. Without having to worry about how I was going to get to work, on Sunday morning I was able to go out with my camera and enjoy the snow like I hadn't for years.
And then after about 10 minutes I decided that snow was really quite cold and just as pretty from inside my flat as outside and that what I really wanted to do was to make an apple crumble.
Judging by the response I got on twitter, I was not the only person who decided that a snowy Sunday was a good day for a crumble, one of those warm stodgy puddings that leave you feeling satisfyingly full at the end of a meal.
I have a seemingly never-ending supply of cranberries in my freezer so I threw a couple of handfuls in with my sliced apples and a few tablespoons of sugar. I make crumble the way my grandmother made it. The fruit is sweet and tart and sticky, nestled under a buttery biscuity topping. There is nothing fancy here, just flour, butter and sugar rubbed together until it resembles breadcrumbs and scattered over the fruit. It is perhaps more traditionally served with custard - and my grandfather would never have contemplated eating it any other way - but we like it best with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Even better, there's enough leftover for tonight.
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Apple and cranberry crumbleServes 4
Ingredients
- 2 medium apples
- 75g frozen cranberries
- 2 tablespoons + 100g caster sugar
- A pinch of ground ginger
- 100g unsalted butter
- 200g plain/AP flour
Cooking Directions
- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F
- Peel, core and slice your apples. Try to get them relatively uniform so they will all cook at the same speed. Put the apples in the bottom of a baking dish with the cranberries, 2 tablespoons of sugar and a pinch of ginger. Mix to combine.
- To make the topping, rub together the remaining sugar with the flour and butter until you have something that resembles breadcrumbs.
- Sprinkle on top of the fruit and bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm with ice cream and/or custard.