Recipe: Rhubarb and Apple Crumble

Crumble is a real winter warmer dessert but with our recent unseasonal weather, I decided to make one a couple of weeks ago. I had about 8 sweet red apples that were gone a bit soft and wanted to use them up. I wanted to get  some cooking apples also but instead found rhubarb is in season and only 99c a bunch in our local Pettitts supermarket. So I did a rhubarb and apple crumble. I have to say much nicer than either rhubarb or apple on their own.

I used my favourite recipe book ‘Gimme the recipe’ by Sheila Kiely to find a recipe for the crumble part, and adapted it to make it dairy free. The result was delicious and all the family loved it.

 Ingredients:

1 bunch rhubarb
5 cooking apples (or 8 small sweet apples)
2 dessert spoons caster sugar
100g plain flour
50g wholemeal flour
50g porridge oats
100g margarine
200g light golden brown sugar
margarine to grease dish

Steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 5

2. Peel, core and chop apples. Chop rhubarb. Cook fruit in saucepan with 2 tablespoons of water and the caster sugar. You can leave out the caster sugar if using sweet apples, or add more to taste if you wish. It’s ready when its softening, but not yet soft.

3. Mix the flours and oats and chop in the margarine.

4. Use your fingertips to crumble the mixture until it resembles breadcrumbs.

5. Add the brown sugar and mix well.

6. Place the fruit in a large greased baking dish and pour the crumble mixture on top, press it down lightly.

7. Bake for 35-40 minutes.

8. Serve with your favourite dairy free custard, we love Alpro, or with Swedish Glace vanilla dairy free ice-cream.