Apple, plum and blackberry crumble

My Dad’s not been well recently, so he’s not as active in his garden as he once was.  He rang me last week and asked if I wanted any fruit, and Sam and I popped in to see him and to perform a quick raid of his gorgeous fruit trees. There are so many plums on the tree they’re weighing down the branches (and the wasps are having a field day), so we picked a load of those and also a load of his apples – I’m not sure of the variety but they’re somewhere in between an eater and a cooker and make awesome crumble.  Seeing as we’d picked some blackberries on our walk, I thought I’d make an apple, plum and blackberry crumble. Here’s how to recreate it:

The plum tree in Dad’s garden

Sam picking apples – who needs a ladder?

Garden bounty!

As I just cooked with what I had, my quantities are a bit random.  If you like a thicker topping, or if you have quite a lot of fruit, I’d suggest doubling up on the crumble mixture (I ended up having enough for an extra crumble for Mr E to take to work!)

Apple, plum and blackberry crumble

You will need:

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp golden caster sugar
450g cooking apples (around 3 large apples) peeled, cored and chopped into chunks
Plums (I didn’t measure, but I’d say around 200g), pitted and quartered
Couple of handfuls of blackberries

For the crumble:

200g plain flour
100g butter
125g crunchy brown sugar (I use Demarara)
25g porridge oats
For the top: toasted, chopped hazelnuts or flaked almonds or just more crunchy brown sugar

Cooking the apples

Apples, plums and blackberries

Preheat the oven to gas 6/200 degrees.

First, peel, core and chop the apples (if you pop the prepared apples into a bowl of salted water they won’t go brown), then quarter and pit the plums and wash the blackberries.

Melt the butter and sugar together in a large saucepan and add in the apples.  Cook them for about 5 minutes then add in the plums and blackberries.  Spoon the mixture into the bottom of a pie dish.

To make the crumble, put the flour and sugar in a bowl, then add in chunks of the cold butter.  Using just the tips of your fingers, rub the chunks of butter into the flour/sugar mixture until looks like breadcrumbs, then stir in the porridge oats.

Spoon the crumble over the fruit (I scrunch it in my hands to get it nice and lumpy), then sprinkle with nuts or brown sugar and bake for about 30 minutes.  Serve with double cream or custard.  Save some for breakfast too. Yum!

Thanks to my lovely Dad. Get well soon xxx