The crumble that's easier than tart

Apple crumble counts as one of our favourites because it tastes wonderful and it's hard to make a bad one.

That said, we've also had our fair share of failed apple crumble that became an inverse apple pie. We were to find out later that we had our proportion of ingredients wrong. Our recipe comes from this dictionary thick French cookbook 500 menus by Mariel. So Rémi had translated and copied the recipe onto a piece of paper, with the quantity of everything halved except the butter. So we've used the wrong proportion blissfully at least twice. Sorry, to those who had been unfortunate guinea pigs to our failed crumble experiments.

Crumble is said to originate from wartime Britain due to scarcity of flour, fat and sugar. So it's not French, and it's easier to make than the classic French Apple Tart (which is supposed to be easy to made, according to instructions from Rémi's mother: you make the Pâte brisée and lay slices of apples with sugar on the dough and bake, but we never manage to make it even nearly as good as hers), less troublesome as you do not need to roll out any dough.

Take care to get the right type of apples. The crunchy big apples from China or equally crunchy Fuji apples are out.

Apple Crumble
serves about 6

5 apples (recipe says 1kg apples, but only the grocer will bother to weigh your apples. Use about 5, or adjust according to size of your tin)
200g flour
150g sugar (brown sugar gives a more chewy, caramelised texture)
150g butter (cold, straight from fridge)
cinnamon (a quick dash if using powder, or 1 stick)


Peel apples and dice.

Cook with cinnamon and a bit of water (about 3tbsp) for about 10 minutes under low fire. If you have a really sweet tooth, you may cook apple with some sugar, but the crumble itself is sweet and I'll rather reduce my sugary sin.

For the crumble, rub cold butter into the flour with your fingertips. Mix in sugar. The resulting mixture has to look like a crumble, if you know what I mean. It is dry and doesn't stick to your finger or becomes a dough, and all the flour has been incorporated with the butter.

Pour the cooked apples (minus the cinnamon stick) into a tin. Top with the crumble. Bake at 200C for 20-25 minutes, until the crumble is golden brown.

Eat warm with vanilla ice-cream. C'est bon.