Recipe for the Crumble

As requested here is my crumble recipe.

1. butter a baking or pie dish
2. fill 2/3 to 3/4 full with fresh fruit of the season. Canned fruit works too, but nothing compares to fresh blueberries. I usually put in two types of fruit. In the one in the picture I put in blue berries and thinly sliced, peeled apples.
   
3. Sprinkle lightly with lemon zest and sugar. You don't really need the sugar if the fruit is really sweet and in season. I usually also dust the fruit with a thin layer of flour.
   

Then add the crumble mixture on top. I have two ways of making it. The one on the picture that I posted on my previous blog insert is the one with the crispy, hard outside and gooey inside. The other one remains more like a streusel.

Ingredients for crispy outside:

2 cups flour, 2 cups sugar, 2 tsps baking powder, 2 beaten eggs, lemon zest. Rub between your fingers to make streusel. Then melt butter and pour evenly over the mixture once it is covering the fruit.

Ingredients for softer streusel:

Equal measures of sugar and flour, and add some freshly grated lemon zest. Add butter to make streusel. I don't ever measure how much butter I put in, but I'm guessing if you put a cup each of flour and sugar, it's about 8 tbsp of butter. I just check for the consistency of the streusel. It should be forming nice little round clots, throughout, not too greasy, not too dry.

Bake at 350 fahrenheit or 180 celsius for about one hour. You can start checking after 45 minutes. This tastes especially good if you serve it with some vanilla pudding when it's cooled down, or vanilla/caramel/or cinnamon ice cream, depending on which fruit you put in.

Some tips:
If you're using berries, you really should dust with flour. Especially blueberries tend to expand. The ratio between streusel and fruit is up to you, but be aware that more fruit than streusel will cause the fruit juices to bubble up around the streusel -especially if you used the soft streusel recipe, which I prefer, by the way. It tastes just fine, even if it bubbles. However don't fill the dish too high with fruit or you'll have a huge mess in your oven.

Also, here is my real secret which I will share with you. Lemon zest seems to bring out the natural flavor of most fruits, but you can't really substitute with dried lemon zest that you can get in little bottles here in Europe. When you zest the lemon hold it over the ingredients. By grating the lemons right over the ingredients the very potent essential oils are sprayed finally on the ingredients, and that is what gives it such an amazing taste.

Enjoy.