Does anyone ever actually read the blurbs before recipes?
I don’t know about you, but I just want to get to making the damn food.
For the patient saints among us who are actually interested in my thoughts about this recipe, this is kind of healthier than normal apple and rhubarb crumble because it’s been made with all local farm shop produce, organic flour, plus one of the “healthier” sugars, coconut palm sugar - so as well as being fresher and with fewer pesticides, it tastes about a bajillion times better than any other crumble I’ve made in the past.
But it’s by no means actually healthy - it’s still loaded with sugar and carbs (which of course break down in the body into sugar) and most of us already eat waaaaay too much of that, so maybe save this for a big family get together so that it gets shared around 😉
Until a few months ago I couldn’t tolerate gluten or FODMAPs, yet this crumble had both normal flour and apples in it and I had no ill reactions, so I’m pretty bloody chuffed - if you would like to know how I’m healing myself I talk about it a lot right here.
You can definitely sub the flour for a GF one (suggestions below), use a FODMAP-friendly filling like berries, and even cut the sugar by about 20% if you’re insulin resistant like I am (working on it!) and it should still taste pretty amazeballs.
However, this particular crumble that I randomly decided to knock together the other night blew Graeme’s socks off and we got some lovely snaps of it as we’re practising our photography so I figured why not unleash my creation on the world.
If nothing else, the next time you make custard you NEED to try using coconut palm sugar. This custard was super sweet but didn’t give me that scratchy throat and sickly feeling like the tinned stuff. Plus it looks like silky smooth caramel. Seriously it’s the nuts.
Apple and rhubarb crumble with coconut sugar custard
Serves 4 hungry people - or 6 overly polite British people. You should probably be counting your macros before dishing this up 😉
Takes less than an hour to make
Painfully easy
For the crumble filling
5/6 Granny Smith apples (I was just trying to use up what I had lying around)
2 stalks rhubarb
1 tsp organic ground cinnamon (optional)
1 dessert spoon organic coconut palm sugar
Splash of water
For the crumble topping(ish, I forgot to make a note of the quantities I used, der der Kayleigh)
150g butter from your local grass-fed moo moos
300g organic white bread flour (I’ll be trying brown rice or buckwheat flour next but plain GF would work too)
150g organic coconut palm sugar
For the coconut sugar custard
100ml double cream (we got ours from our local farm shop but I’ll try oat cream next time)
350ml oat milk
2 large egg yolk from your local free range chickadees!
2 tbsp cornflour
100g organic coconut palm sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Method
Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
For the crumble filling, peel, core and slice the apples, hack the rhubarb into thumb-sized pieces using a pair of scissors and bung into a pan with a tiny dash of water, the cinnamon and the coconut sugar. Cook over a medium heat, stirring now and then until tender, about 10 mins.
I like chunks of fruit in my crumble but you can keep cooking it down until it’s completely mush if you like it that way, there’s no rules, go bananas and experiment.
Grease an ovenproof dish and pour the mixture in. My square dish in the pics is 8×8 inches at the bottom but I don’t imagine an inch either way would make a whole heap of difference.
For the crumble topping, pop the butter and flour into a bowl and rub together until it looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the coconut sugar then chuck the topping over the apple and rhubarb mixture.
Pop in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden on top. I did 20 mins because the oven in our rented flat isn’t sealed properly so just use your best judgement.
While that’s going you can get started on the custard by putting the cream and milk into a large pan and gently bringing it to just below boiling point.
In a bowl, whisk the yolks, cornflour, coconut sugar and vanilla together then gradually pour in the hot cream/milk while whisking constantly. I used an electric whisker but to be honest that was a bit strong so just use a hand whisk.
Give the saucepan a quick wipe then pour the mixture back in. Heat gently, stirring with a wooden spoon until the custard gets as thick as you like it, taking off the heat before any lumps form.
Serve. Obviously.
And before you sit down and enjoy this sugary mess you must of course set everything out all sexy-like and take lots and lots of photos for Instagram and Pinterest, like so:
Hope this doesn’t go horribly wrong for you if you decide to give it a go - if you manage to fudge up a crumble though I’ll be impressed!
