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Apple Crumble Recipe - Crunchy on Top, Jammy Underneath (and No Coring Marathon)
Half Bramley, half eating apples, simmered for five minutes so they go jammy, under a cold-butter oat topping that actually crunches. Plus a blackberry version and the fastest way to core a bag of apples.
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- Prep20 min
- Cook45 min
- Rest5 min
- Serves6
There are two kinds of crumble in this world.
The first has a crunchy, golden, slightly craggy top, sitting on soft, sharp, jammy apples that bubble up purple round the edges.
The second is a damp beige blanket on top of apple chunks that could still be used as dice.
We've all been served the second one. Usually by someone we love, so we said nothing.
This is my apple crumble recipe for the first kind.
It's the proper British pudding: two kinds of apple, a buttery oat topping, a blackberry version for when the hedges are full, and custard. Obviously custard.
I read a pile of crumbles from people who know what they're doing, kept what they agreed on and pinched the clever bits.
And I've sorted the most boring part of the whole job: coring a bag of apples. More on that shortly.
Is crumble actually that old?
Here's the surprise. Not really.
It feels like something a Tudor would have eaten off a wooden plate, but crumble doesn't turn up in the old English cookbooks at all.
The Oxford Companion to Food reckons it probably took off during the Second World War, when a quick rubbed-in topping used less fat than pastry and rationing made everyone inventive.
The first printed mention in Britain is from 1952, in a Good Housekeeping encyclopedia that called it a "Canadian or 'crumble' topping". Which feels like the Canadians being robbed.
The apple has a better story. Every Bramley in the world comes from one tree, grown from pips planted by a girl called Mary Ann Brailsford in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, in 1809.
The first Bramleys went on sale in 1862. So this is about as close as an apple crumble recipe UK kitchens can get to a family heirloom.
What you need
For the fruit
- 500g Bramley apples, about 2 large ones. Sharp, and they collapse into a soft sauce. That's the point of them.
- 500g eating apples, about 4. Cox or Braeburn. These keep a bit of bite.
- 75g caster sugar. Taste the apples - very sharp Bramleys might want a little more.
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tbsp lemon juice. Stops the apples going brown while you work.
- 2 tbsp water
For the topping
- 175g plain flour
- A pinch (about ¼ tsp) of salt. Yes, in a pudding. Trust me.
- 125g cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes. Cold is not optional.
- 100g demerara sugar. The big crystals are what make it crunch.
- 50g jumbo or rolled oats
Kit
- An ovenproof dish of about 2 litres, roughly 20 x 25cm
- A baking tray to sit it on
- A big mixing bowl and a saucepan with a lid
- A chopping board and an apple corer, or a sharp knife and patience
How to make apple crumble
1. Make the topping first and chill it
- Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan, gas 6).
- Put the flour and salt in a big bowl and add the cold butter.
- Rub the butter in with your fingertips, lifting the mix up and letting it fall back into the bowl, until it looks like rough breadcrumbs.
- Stir in the demerara sugar and oats.
- Squeeze a few handfuls together so you get some bigger clumps among the crumbs. Clumps are where the crunch lives.
- Put the bowl in the fridge while you sort the apples.
That's really all there is to how to make crumble topping. The skill is mostly in keeping your hands cold and your patience warm.
If your kitchen is hot, run your wrists under the cold tap first. It sounds daft. It works.
2. Core and chop the apples
- Peel all the apples. Bramley skin is tough, so it has to come off.
- Sit each apple upright on the board and press the corer straight down through it. You get neat wedges and the core stays behind in the middle.
- Cut the wedges into chunks about 2-3cm. Even sizes cook evenly, so you don't end up with a mix of mush and rocks.
- Toss them in the lemon juice as you go.
Coring is the bit everyone dreads. Six or so apples, each one a wrestle with a knife and a growing pile of pips.
So we use our apple corer and slicer. Push down, done, next apple. The whole bag takes about a minute. I've timed it. I need a hobby.
Use a decent board for this, too. Here's a board that can take the punishment.
3. Give the apples a head start
- Tip the apples into the saucepan with the caster sugar, cinnamon and water.
- Put the lid on and simmer gently for about 5 minutes, until the Bramleys just start to soften and go saucy at the edges.
- Spoon everything into the dish and let it cool for a few minutes.
This step is the difference between jammy apples and crunchy ones. The fruit carries on cooking in the oven, so don't let it go to mush in the pan.
4. Top it and bake
- Scatter the chilled topping evenly over the fruit, about 1.5cm deep.
- Do not press it down. Loose and lumpy is right.
- Sit the dish on a baking tray and bake for 35-40 minutes, until the top is deep golden and the fruit is bubbling up at the edges.
- Leave it for 5 minutes before serving. Molten apple is basically lava.
Cold butter, loose topping. Warm butter melts into the flour and turns it to dough. Pressing the topping down squashes out all the little air gaps. Either way you get a soggy lid instead of a crunchy one. Treat the topping like a duvet, not a mattress.
Make it an apple and blackberry crumble
When the hedgerows are full in late summer and autumn, this is the one.
- Swap 200g of the eating apples for 200g of blackberries. Fresh or frozen both work.
- Simmer the apples on their own, then stir the blackberries in raw just before the fruit goes into the dish. They'll soften in the oven and keep their shape.
- Expect more purple juice bubbling up the sides. That's not a mess. That's a feature.
If you pick your own, give them a good rinse and check for small visitors.
What to serve it with
Custard. Then, if you must, cream, ice cream, crème fraîche or Greek yoghurt.
Crumble is a pudding, not a health food - but the fruit does count. The NHS says 80g of fruit is one portion of your 5 A Day, though it also points out that puddings can be high in sugar and fat. So, one bowl. A normal-sized bowl.
It's also the perfect end to a Sunday roast. If you're feeding a crowd, here's how we go about timing a big family dinner so pudding isn't an afterthought.
And a cup of strong coffee on the side never hurt anyone.
If it goes wrong
Topping soggy or doughy? The butter got warm, or the topping was patted down flat.
Fix: butter straight from the fridge, chill the topping before it goes on, and scatter it loosely.
Apples still hard? The chunks were too big, or they went in raw.
Fix: keep the chunks to 2-3cm and give them the 5-minute simmer first.
Juice bubbled over and burnt on the oven floor? The smell of defeat.
Fix: always bake it on a tray, and don't fill the dish right to the brim.
Want to make it ahead?
Fix: the raw topping freezes in a bag for up to 2 months - scatter it straight from frozen and give it a few extra minutes. Leftover crumble keeps covered in the fridge for 2 days; reheat it until it's piping hot all the way through.
Keep a bag of that topping in the freezer and you're never more than a few apples away from pudding.
Which is either a great life hack or a serious problem. I've stopped asking.
Now go and cook something.
