This recipe takes the heretical approach of cooking the crumble separately so it's more crunchy. I have to say I was outraged at the very idea, what do French chefs know about our British crumble?! I love the traditional way crumbles have that soft, gooey transition between the fruit, the juice-soaked crumble, and the crunchy top.
I was prepared to hate this deconstructed crumble, but it's actually quite nice, if not quite traditional. It's a bit like having stewed fruit with that oat-crunch cereal on top.
The fruit here is particularly special, with a richly reduced sweet wine sauce. I used Amaretto but any sweet dessert wine or red wine will also work. Another advantage of the deconstructed approach is you can make it look pretty in individual serving bowls.
Stewed fruit:
- Five large black plums, stoned and quartered
- Four pears, peeled, cored and quartered
- 1 glass of Amaretto or sweet wine
- 4 tbsp sugar (to taste)
- 1 tsp almond extract
Crumble topping:
- 100g plain white flour
- 50g ground almonds
- 25g flaked almonds
- 100g demerara sugar (or simple granulated)
- 50g butter
- Put the fruit and wine in a large pan, and gently stew for ten minutes or so until the fruit is well cooked but the pieces retain their shape.
- Strain the fruit, reserving the delicious liquid, and return the liquid to the pan.
- Dissolve the 4 tbsp of sugar in the liquid, and leave it to gently simmer and reduce until it's thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
- Preheat the oven to 200C.
- Make the topping by rubbing together the flour, butter and sugar in a bowl so it forms rough clumps, then mix in the ground almonds.
- Spread the crumble onto a baking dish, sprinkle the top with the flaked almonds, and bake for about 10 minutes until it's lightly browned and crunchy.
- Mix the reduced sauce with the cooked fruit and the almond extract, and pour into a deep serving dish.
- When the crumble is cooked, sprinkle on top of the fruit, and enjoy with cream or custard!
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