Sticky Pear & Apple Crumble.

I am stuffed, and all in the name of research.  For the second night in a row I’ve made a fruit crumble.  Last night it was straight forward apple and tonight I went completely wild and threw in some pears.  Both are scrumptious and if I wasn’t off to Dublin tomorrow I’d be making another one.  I think I’ve invented this new crumble recipe but perhaps its been tried before.  It’s sticky, chewy and sweet and with a combination of oats, wholemeal and plain flour is almost healthy if you can forget about all the sugar!

(By the way I’ve been on a training course where I’ve learned about this brilliant website called webresizer.com that you can use for free to shrink the size of pictures so these picture heavy pages should load more quickly in future.)  Top pic is apple and bottom is pear and apple.
You will need:
100g unsalted butter
100g plain flour
50g wholemeal flour
50g porridge oats
200g brown sugar
2kgs of fruit – Roughly 4 to 5 medium sized cooking apples and 4 to 5 small ripe pears
50g caster sugar (for cooking the fruit)
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C
Peel and chop the fruit into smallish pieces and cook in a saucepan with a splash of water and the caster sugar over a medium to high heat until softening (still bitey and not a pulp).  Takes about 5 minutes.
Put the flour and oats in a mixing bowl and chop in the butter.
Use your finger tips to crumble the flour and butter together until it’s starting to resemble breadcrumbs.
Add the brown sugar and mix well with a fork.
Place the cooked fruit in a baking dish and scatter the crumble mixture on top, press it down lightly but don’t over compact it.
Bake for 45 minutes.
Delicious on its own, even better with custard or vanilla ice-cream. Enjoy.
Til next time, Sheila