Thursday 9 October 2008

Crumble

Nigella 'How to Eat' p.46 says

120g self-raising flour (Nigella says plain's OK.)
90g butter, cold and diced into 1cm cubes
3 table spoons light muscavado sugar (I use the really dark brown stuff.)
3 table spoons vanilla sugar (that's way too posh for this kitchen, so I use caster sugar)

To which I add a handful of jumbo rolled oats. Nuts can be nice too. Sultanas ....

Crumble away. Do what you do with your fruity bits. Add a bit of sugar and water? That all depends on what it is and how tart the fruit is -very in the case of my Mum's windfall Bramleys just now.

Gas mark 5/ 190C for 25-35 mins.

Butter room temp or cold? I'm pretty relaxed on that, though never really soft.

My Mum just does the good ol' 3:2:1 method flour:sugar:butter and my Dad has been eating away merrily for forty years on her crumbles. No complints from that end of the table. She says it can be very crumbly or pleasingly shortbready depending on the whim of the cook. Very sweet or not so.

I like Nigella, but the grams thing and then tablespoons.... SI Units for cooking needed here methinks. Also, I have 3 different sizes of tablespoons and that doesn't seem to have messed up the crumble ever. The dark brown sugar is nice though.

So there we are. Anyone else have anything to say on this topic?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you! I will have a shot in the near future. 3-2-1 weight-wise or volume-wise? Thank you very much indeed! It was very kind of you to go to all this trouble.

leutgeb said...

That would be a weight ratio.

However, I think that it should be Flour:Butter:sugar... If it's
120g:90g:6 tablespoons according to Nigella. I shall check with she who knows. Sorry.

Anyway, happy cooking. Always happy to think of people cooking 'nice dinners' for people.

LizzieD said...

I always use 6oz flour, 3oz butter, 2oz sugar - does that make a ratio of 3:2:1 ? I hate ratios, I'm supposed to be teaching it to my son at the moment - I'd rather eat apple crumble any day!
I also add a handfull or two of sesame seeds, or oats or sunflower seeds, and it doesn't seem to affect the outcome.
Just been given a bag of bramleys after Mass yesterday, I'd better get peeling!

leutgeb said...

Thank you Maggie C. Yup that's 3:2:1 divide through by 2...

Let's Berenike reads this again to get the proper proprtions!

Anonymous said...

I think its 3:1.5:1, no? Or, better, 6:3:2 (to make it 321 the middle one would have to be 4).

Er.

leutgeb said...

You are right, of course, Berenike.

Hope one of these works for you.

I'm sticking with Nigella!