Rainy Day Baking – Beige

Posted byofftheedgegardeningPosted inRecipesTags:,

It is raining. Which means I am at a loose end. Which means I have done some baking. Which means that the beautiful Bramleys that one of the Newton Babes gave me will not go to waste. All good news. Except the bit about the rain.

Be warned, as with all unplanned baking adventures, some tweaks and turns have been made. If I were to be honest, planned baking rarely happens in this house.

Although I toyed with the idea of a pie, I eventually decided upon attempting an apple crumble. It is many years since I last made one, but I seem to remember it is far simpler than pie, which involves pastry and all the jeopardy that comes with it. And we have vanilla ice cream, which to my mind is the best accompaniment to just about any warm sweet dish. It also covers a multitude of sins. There will be custard fans amongst you, no doubt. I am sorry for your misguidance. I made a half-hearted attempt to follow a recipe from BBC Good Food, an approximation of their instructions are in normal type, my interpretation in italic.

Apple Crumble

Turn the oven on to pre-heat.
Not yet, it’s too early. Never too soon for a little rebellion.

Place flour, salt and sugar into a bowl and rub with fingertips until resembling breadcrumbs.
300g plain flour seems a bit dull, I’m sure I’ve got some rye flour somewhere, here we are, let’s mix it up a bit, just about 60g. 175g brown sugar sounds a bit much, I’ll reduce that, I wonder if we can get away with 100g? And I’ll have to mix light brown and dark sugar because I don’t have enough light. Phew! Just enough butter to make 200g with a little left over for greasing the dish. On a roll now. All rubbed and ready. Seems an awful lot of crumble. Sure it will be fine. Who am I to argue with the fine folk at the BBC? Time to turn on the oven.

Place the 450g of peeled cored apples in a bowl with sugar, 1 tbsp of flour and pinch of cinnamon.
The apples are picture perfect, but as I forgot to take a picture until after I had begun their dissection, you will have to take my word for it. I use my new opinel knife. I am a great fan of knives, which should not unduly worry anyone. I decided, rather cleverly I thought, to cut out the bowl bit and put the apples etc straight into the baking dish. Seemed a little lacking in the apple department so add another half, then another half. That looks better. Shall we talk cinnamon? Last week I bought some cinnamon, especially to enhance an apple something or other. Now, apparently, a mere “pinch” is needed. Hold on Cowboy, I aint having none of that. I added a big lug into the crumble and a generous splush into the apple mix. You can’t have too much cinnamon. Oh, actually you can. I just remembered the time I made ginger biscuits and substituted (unintentionally) cinnamon for ginger. They were so dreadful even the dog wouldn’t eat them. Fingers crossed.

Butter a 24cm ovenproof dish
Oops! I forgot to grease the dish and now the apples etc are in there and I am not going to even consider taking them out again and as I will not be doing the washing up I don’t care which means that I will be doing the washing up because now I feel guilty. Plus, I didn’t measure the dish which would have served no purpose as I don’t have another one.

Spoon the fruit mixture into the buttered dish and then sprinkle the crumble on top.
OK, I get it, no need to worry your point. The crumb is sprinkled and then pressed down because there really is an awful lot of crumble. I am beginning to wonder if I got the measurements correct. Too late now. Sprinkle with a little cinnamon, just to worry my point.

Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until the crumble is browned and the fruit bubbling.
In you go, my lovely, do your very best. Set grumpy cat to 40 minutes and do my extreme yoga practice. Alarm rings. Ummmm, not sure, set it for another 5 minutes and think about the lost stapler that will not be found and will not be replaced until I find it. Alarm rings. It must be in a box somewhere, there is no way I would throw it away, it never let me down, never jammed or bulked at multi-pages, that stapler was the best stapler I’ve ever ……. OVEN!!!!

All was well, although it does look rather similar to when it went into the oven. The main difference is a photobombing Grumpy Cat. I blame the dark brown sugar and the rye flour. It looks very beige. And beige is not the best food colour. Still, who cares, it tastes delicious. No complaints in this house.

27 thoughts on “Rainy Day Baking – Beige”

    1. Strange you should say that, I spotted the oats in the cupboard when I was looking for the rye flour and I wondered …… But then I chickened out because I didn’t know how it was affect the mix. Next time I will. More texture as well I would imagine.

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  3. 😂 Immensely enjoyable post! Next time someone asks me if I bake I shall direct them to this marvelous description and say, “I bake like that.” I tried a strawberry rhubarb crisp recently but neglected some measurements. Ice cream would have helped it a lot. 😉 Keep writing! It’s so fun to read your blog!

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  5. The best kind of recipe. Looks good. Watch out for the snarky comments about the exact measurements of splushes and lugs though. I’ve had complaints from readers that a ‘glug’ was too imprecise for their liking. Oh and regarding oats, I agree 🙂

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  6. Funny, I made apple and blackberry crumble for the first time in years recently. I have used oats and also ground almonds in place of flour. I always reduce the sugar too. Forgot cinnamon – damn! And yes, we like it with vanilla ice cream (preferably clotted cream)

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  7. Well Sis, your pudding is perfect, and guess what I add all sorts of flours and rye went into crumble made with neighbour’s apple with a few loosely frozen blackcurrants that I made last week. I am never exact. Did you mention the glorious smell? I find that I get nose blind after so long, so I go into the garden for a few minutes, and back in the house it smells divine. Who needs apple and cinnamon infused room or scent diffuses?

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      1. Synchronicity, well that is the word of the week, you have such a fantastic command of the language and it really comes out in your posts. It replaces the word for the day that I picked up on Wednesday at the market: Loquacious!

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      3. Just had to make another crumble for this evening after reading your post, and bearing in mind your correct description of the colour that rye gives, this time added some polenta instead, about 20% of the flour, again on blackcurrant and apple.

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  10. I feel hungry now. “There will be custard fans amongst you, no doubt. I am sorry for your misguidance.” Ah that made me laugh. Ice cream is my wife’s crumble accompaniment of choice but I must admit I usually opt for a cold Devon custard, although ice cream is acceptable if applied generously. We always ignore the turn on oven instruction but then tend to forget to turn it on until the ‘put in oven’ bit.

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  11. Pingback: The Compulsive Gardener | October Garden–fall harvests, winter crops, tucking the worms in & sharing the abundance

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