Sour Cherry & Apple Crumble

It's no secret amongst my family and friends that I love cherries, particularly sour or morello cherries, or those preserved in liqueur. My parents even created an alcoholic morello cherry fruit salad as my birthday "cake" this year and I was delighted.

A while ago I went looking for preserved cherries to keep in my storecupboard, to guard against future sweet cravings. I found jars of sour cherries, made by Windmill Organics / Biona, on sale in a webshop and promptly ordered three jars.

So it came to pass that the other night both my husband and I wanted pudding. I'd sent him to the supermarket to pick up a couple of things and while he was there, he phoned me to regale me with descriptions of the various pre-made puddings they had laid out to tempt him. Weirdly, for a hot summer's day, all they had in the organic section were treacle tarts, sticky toffee puddings and the like. 
A little too wintery for me; I can eat those things in the middle of winter if I want (and lovely they are too), but I really wanted some fruit to round off a brilliant, sunny day. So, instead, I asked him to bring home a pot of cream and an apple.

This recipe is really just another version of my Rhumble, but I think it's always worth sharing variations on a theme. The topping is the same, but the filling is very different, though perhaps even simpler.

First job is to peel and core the apple, then gently heat it with the apple juice from the cherry jar, a dash of cherry liqueur/brandy if you have it, and a sprinkling of brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Once it's started to go soft, stir in the cherries from the jar and have a little taste. Add more sugar or some lemon juice as you like.

Tip this into a baking dish and set to one side while you make the topping.

The topping, as before, is just 100g of flour and 50g butter rubbed together until breadcrumby. Mixed in with 50g brown sugar, oats and some chopped nuts; I used walnut peices and some salted peanuts.

Pour this over the top of the fruit and put in the oven for 20 minutes at 180 degrees. Simple as that!

Rhumble

I can't think of any better tribute to a spring rhubarb than to turn it into a tasty crumble pudding. I'm sure there are lots of other exciting things I could be doing with it, but the first rhubarb of the year deserves a crumble.

Rhubarb and ginger are a well known duo and my pudding isn't going to be an exception: a bit of stem ginger in syrup gives it a lovely, warm, spicy flavour. Chop it up pretty finely though, as you probably don't want to bite down on a huge chunk of ginger, no matter how much you like it.

Ginger and rum are also a common pairing, so it wasn't a huge leap for me to go from rhubarb to ginger to rum, making this dish a Rhumble in more ways than one.

Cut your rhubarb into nice little lengths and pop it into a saucepan with some sugar (to taste), the ginger, a splash of water and a couple of capfuls of dark rum. Heat up until it goes all squishy, ten minutes maybe.

In the meantime make your topping. It's very like making pastry at the beginning: rub 50g butter into 100g flour until breadcrumby. Then add 50g sugar, I like brown sugar best for this, and whatever oats or nuts you happen to have in the house, crushed into little peices.

Put the rhubarb mixture into the bottom of a dish, top with the crumble and sling in the oven for 20 minutes.

Particularly delicious with freshly whipped cream! Equally tasty with custard.