A fumble with a crumble

Don’t worry, we’re not doing a crumble recipe fully…because seriously, who can’t make a crumble?

Crumble by Candlelight...A scent for men*. New, from House of Wondercat (*fat men)

What we are doing is sharing a few tips to get a great crumble, an interesting crumble, the sitting on the washing machine of crumbles…

Most crumbles are good if not great.  The squishy filling the buttery, sweet top, that middle section where the layers embrace each other and create the warm stodgy gloop of wonder.  So, how can we improve?  Texture, texture people! Texture, texture, texture!!!

What we want out of a crumble is all of the above, plus, an interesting nugget of something here, a crunch of joy there…something to literally get our teeth into!  Because, let’s face it, crumbles may be a comforting delight but you could gum your way through most of them (and there’ll be plenty of time for than in our twilight years sat by the window in the nursing home).

So here’s how we make our crumble a bit more stimulating…

Crumble Top Wondercat Style

• 100g butter
• 100g golden caster sugar
• 200g plain flour
• 100g rolled oats
• 50g hazelnuts
• pinch o’ salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• seeds from a vanilla pod
• splash of cream or milk
• bit of brown sugar

1. rub butter into flour until breadcrumby
2. stir in salt, sugar, bp, vanilla seeds
3. cut through a splash of cream just to get it sticking to inself
4. grab dough, give it a squeeze (like honking on a boob possibly?) then plonk onto a baking tray
5. it should be crumby in places, doughy in places, thick in bits, sandy in others
   

   uncooked...yet delicious...I am an uncooked dough eater

6. bake at 170ºC until some bits are golden and crisp but others are still uncooked and stodgy
   

   partly cooked...yet delicious...I am a partly-cooked dough eater

7. leave to cool (ok, eat a little bit…it’s fucking scrummy)
8. crunch up about 2/3rds (oh a fraction, I feel so 1970’s cookbook) of the hazelnuts roughly with a rolling pin
9. take a zip-lock bag and put in the crushed nuts, the oats and snap up the biscuit stuff and throw that in too.
10. take out anger with rolling pin on bag of stuff…don’t go too crazy as you want, no, REQUIRE boulders and nuggets of biscuit greatness
11. pour onto your crumble filling, if it is very stir in a bit of melted butter to get it a little sticky
12. scatter or arrange the intact hazelnuts on top
13. sprinkle on a bit of brown sugar
    

    unbaked but I would...I did

14. bake as your recipe says

We made little individual apple, cinnamon and golden raisin crumbles and they were much improved with the crunchy extras…total om nom time.

ooooh, toasted hazelnuts...this is Simon's; there were a few less hazelnuts when he got it

The hazelnuts on top toast up perfectly so you get a few different nutty flavours and shapes and sizes as well as the biscuity rubble.  Whist adding some greatness to the top you still retain that magical dividing layer of sticky, gooey, wonderful sexycrumbletimes (I’m imagining a planet of crumble, we are talking delicious mantle I think).

So, Autumn is here, there is fruit a plenty and nipple-bitingly cold weather approaching!  Go and make crumble!

p.s. Don’t dance semi-nekkid around the kitchen with an ipod tucked into your underwear *sobs*

poor pod, squished between my arse cheek and my tighty whities then dropped to it's death

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