Did you think I'd Crumble?

So, I would like to say, before I continue, that I am a sociable and fun loving girl. I really am. Just to prove this to you I’ve drawn up a list of some of my Favourite Activities which include, but are not limited to, drinking cocktails with ‘the gals’, eating sushi with said quotation- ringed gals (in fact, add ‘with the gals’ to the end of most of these),  being the first one to start dancing at a party and the last one to stop, singing very loudly to One Direction while driving with all the windows down, spending unnecessary amounts of time drawing up a list of top five men we’d marry (and ditto for women we’d turn for), trying on sunglasses, pretending to be in ‘Sex and The City’, drinking cider at concerts, going out for breakfast, attending absurdly themed fancy dress parties, having baking days with my best friend when it rains, going mental in the perfume section of Duty Free, riding my brilliant blue bike and painting my nails in the bath before a party.

SEE?!

I’m good fun and I generally go about my business thinking that life should be enjoyed.

But sometimes things can get a bit crap, and when they do, all this pretending to be Carrie Bradshaw can be a bit of an effort, or even, just veryyy occasionally, make things worse.

It was because of this that, a couple of week ends ago, drowning in coursework, suffering a rejection and unable to drink owing to a course of antibiotics for an infected wisdom tooth (don’t even ask. Seriously. My actual life) I spent Saturday night watching the best of 1970s disco on BBC 4 with my mother. It was literally one of the most enjoyable ways to spend a Friday night!! Seriously, no word of a lie, I LOVED IT. (And this is why you needed to be reminded that I am normally a little bit cool and sociable and vaguely 18 year old-ish). We got so into the whole 70s disco thing. So clearly, just that first twang of Gloria Gaynor had us singing along. (Maybe shrieking/howling/caterwauling if you’re asking the neighbour. Whichever.) By the time we’d reached the chorus fists were in the air.

It was all most enjoyable, and a reminder that shit happens; you will occasionally feel utterly depressed; you will, from time to time, get the impression that some higher being is conspiring against you to make it all as difficult as possible; you will every so often feel completely powerless and you will sometimes feel like giving up and going to hide under your duvet with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s and the Downton Abbey boxset as your only companion. But – without wishing to sound overly Disney – life goes on. Gloria was on the money; yeah, you will survive. Totally. Girl Power!! Woo. Ahem. Anyway.

We went to bed wholly empowered.

Life was still looking a little bit grey when I woke up the next morning. It was raining and spring still had not bloody sprung.

Meh.

Even Muffin (my old and normally very much cheerful Border Terrier) looked miserable.

So I decided that what the Williams household needed was something yummy and homely, which fills the soul with a little spoonful of warmth and that reminds me of childhood and baking with my mum in the holidays.

There was clearly nothing more fitting/worthy for this role than the humble Apple and Blackberry Crumble.

This lovely little pud is simple and cheerful and rather like a cup of tea in the way that it never fails to make me feel that little bit more human.

(Especially with custard. Yum.)

I used Sophie Dahl’s Voluptuous Delight (which, is AMAZE. I love her. I want to BE her. Total girl crush. It might be getting out of hand. She’s so great and jolly) but I took out the oats from the topping. Does a Classic Crumble have oats in the topping? Errm, no, I think not. (No offence Soph. I love you in every other respect. Sorry).

Ingredients:

175g of flour (Any flour, totally your choice. I just used plain white flour)

100g butter

50g soft brown sugar

Handful dark brown sugar (optional)

225g blackberries

225g apples

Tablespoon caster sugar

Tablespoon orange juice

1.    Preheat the oven to 180c

2.    Sieve the flour into a bowl and add the butter. Mix with your fingers. When I say mix, I don’t really mean mix, obvioulsyyy. You don’t ‘mix’ a crumble topping. I mean, rub the flour and butter between your fingers until it looks like breadcrumbs. If it starts to clump together and look a bit too like pie pastry, don’t stress, just add more flour. It’ll all be fine and will crumble (unlike Gloria. Ho ho.)

3.    When it looks like breadcrumbs (although don’t get pernickety about this. Big bits, small bits, we’re an accepting sort here, and it makes it all the more homemade and comforting) mix in the soft brown sugar. Then add the dark brown sugar. This makes it scrummier, but mainly just makes it look nicer. The dark lumps of sugar add some lovely colour.

4.    Peel, core and cut the apples into chunks (the same goes for apple chunk size as that of the breadcrumb topping. Relax. There’s wayyy more to stress about in life) and put in an ovenproof bowl with the blackberries.

5.    Pour the orange juice over the fruit and then add the caster sugar before gently stirring. Don’t stir too vigorously because you don’t want to squish the fruit, but it does sort of all blend when it’s cooked anyway so again, DON’T STRESS. (Notice the emphasis on lack of stress here? Yeah, that’s because the whole point of this process is to de-stress and spread joy. Got it?) Then spoon the crumble onto the fruit to cover.

6.    Bake in the oven for about half an hour until the fruit is bubbling and all the juice is smouldering gorgeously through the topping (err, I just made crumble juices sound like Mr Darcy. Note to self: get a boyfriend. Actually don’t. Puddings are far more reliable. Maybe just stop reading Austen immediately before cooking) and the crumble is golden brown and looks delicious.

7.    This is best eaten warm, and, as said previously, with custard. Lots of custard. Buckets of the stuff. Custard, custard, custard.

Custard and crumble: childhood (and happiness) in a bowl. So serve with custard and love.

'Did you think I'd Crumble?'

When I took this beauty out the oven my dear (mental) mother, admiring my handiwork, asked ‘Did you think I’d crumble?’ This may have actually been directed at the crumble itself. Who knows.

But the point is, we won’t.

This realisation may not be entirely down to the crumble, but it sure as hell helped.

So, to recap, make sure that the only thing crumbling is the topping and enjoy!!

Ros - x