Can you imagine how thrilled I was when Food and Wine magazine voted Apricot Berry Crumble “Best of the Best” shortly after Baking in America was published? Thrilled and surprised, actually, because the dessert is so simple and uncomplicated.
What is a Crumble?
According to Richard Sax’s Classic Home Desserts, it’s a fruit dessert baked with a topping containing oats, essentially an English version of American “crisps”. What both these types of desserts share is a crumbly topping of flour, sugar, and butter that bakes crisp on top as the underside sinks into the fruit to flavor and thicken it. They go way back in our history. Many of the earlier cookbooks don’t even have recipes for crisps and crumbles because they were so commonplace and simple. This crumble, while still maintaining the simplicity of its ancestors, is a bit more sophisticated. Fresh apricots, raspberries, and blueberries, flavored with a few kernels of apricot seeds, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar, bake underneath a generous blanket of buttery flour, oats, sugar, and cinnamon.The sugar I like to use is an organic whole sugar, which is completely unrefined. It is granular, resembling dry yeast, and light brown in color, and has a pleasant background taste of molasses. If you can’t find it, use the same quantities of firmly packed light brown sugar instead.