Get into the festive spirit with this spiced apple and plum crumble!

Forget turkey and ham, we all know festive food is mainly about the desserts!

If you want to try your hand at something homemade this year, a fruit crumble is about as foolproof as you can get. There's no dough to roll or icing to make – and it's meant to look a little rustic and messy! So get to the kitchen give this simple but delicious recipe a go – just make sure you don't end up scoffing it all yourself (or just make two so you can do exactly that)!

This recipe calls for plums to go alongside the apples but you could easily swap in another festive fruit instead of the plums, for example 200g of fresh/frozen blackberries or 2 – 3 cored and sliced dessert pears.

Spiced apple and plum crumble

Ingredients

For the filling:

  • 500g Bramley apples (or another tart apple of your choice eg. Granny Smith), cored and very thinly sliced
  • 50g caster sugar
  • 350g ripe plums, stoned and quartered
  • 1 – 2 tablespoons water

For the crumble:

  • 225g plain flour
  • 110g butter, softened and cubed
  • 110g caster sugar
  • 50g chopped hazelnuts (or another nut of your choice eg. walnuts)
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 180C / Gas Mark 4.
  2. Put the thinly sliced apples, 50g sugar, cinnamon and water into a saucepan and set on a medium heat. Bring the mixture to a simmer and let it stew for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  3. Add the plums and allow to stew for a further 5 minutes.
  4. Once mixture is quite soft, transfer it to a greased pie dish and allow to cool.
  5. To prepare the crumble, place the flour and cubed butter in a mixing bowl and rub together with your fingertips until the mixture becomes "crumbly" – it should resemble coarse breadcrumbs.
  6. Mix in the 110g sugar and the chopped nuts. If using berries instead of plums, add them to the stewed apples in the pie dish now.
  7. Cover apples with the crumble topping.
  8. Place dish in over and bake for 35 minutes until the topping is golden and crisp.
  9. Serve with ice cream or cream.
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