A crumble is probably the easiest kind of dessert you can make; it’s so simple you almost don’t even need a recipe. It’s much simpler than a pie, since it has no crust, and you can use just about any kind of fruit – fresh apples, pears, berries, cherries, etc. There’s no need to measure or weigh the fruit mixture; you typically just fill your baking dish until it’s about 3/4 full. If you don’t have enough of your main fruit, feel free to throw in something else – some peaches with your apples, blueberries with your strawberries, whatever!
We wanted to try a couple crumbles in our HERC XXL tealight oven, so we made one with cherries and one with an apple-ginger mixture. The HERC baked them perfectly, without heating up the kitchen the way our oven would have.
All crumble recipes have two main components – the fruit mixture and the crumbly topping. Your fruit mixture can be just chunks of fruit thrown into the baking dish (with or without some spices), or you can make a sauce out of the fruit. We decided that the cherry mixture would have sauce and the apple would not.
Don’t forget to properly trim the candle wicks, and pre-heat the HERC for about 15-20 minutes.
We used a 9″ x 5″ baking pan, so you may need to adjust the amounts shown below based on the size of your dish.
Apple Ginger filling
3-4 apples – pick your favorite, we used 2 Granny Smith and 1 Fuji
1 T lemon juice
1-2 T sugar
2 T candied ginger
Chop the apples into 1/4″ slices, and chop the candied ginger as small as you can make it. Combine both of these with the lemon juice and sugar toss to coat. Transfer to the baking pan and add the crumb topping (see below).
If you don’t like the flavor of ginger, you can omit it, but you may need to add some additional sugar (depending on how sweet your apples are) – the ginger we used was rolled in sugar. You could also use dried cranberries instead for a sweet/tart flavor.
Cherry filling
4 cups fresh cherries, pitted
4 T sugar
8 T water
2 t corn starch
Put the cherries and sugar in a saucepan and cook over medium-high heat until the cherries are a little soft (about 4-5 minutes). Mix the corn starch and water together in a bowl and add it to the cherries. Cook for about 1 minute or until it gets a bit thick. Transfer to the baking pan and add the crumb topping (see below).
Crumb Topping
1 1/2 cups flour
6 T brown sugar
4 T white sugar
2 pinches of ground cinnamon
2 pinches of salt
10 T unsalted butter, melted (or 10 T coconut oil)
Combine the dry ingredients together and mix well. Add the melted butter (or coconut oil), and using your fingers, mix it together until you have a crumbly mixture. Pour the crumb topping evenly on top of your fruit mixture. (As an experiment, I packed the crumble mixture down on the apple dish, but I think it turns out better if you leave it loose.)
Place the baking dish in the HERC oven and bake for about 1 hour, or until the topping is a golden brown and the mixture is bubbly. Remove from the oven, let cool just a bit, and serve with vanilla ice cream.
The HERC did a great job – see the apples start to bubble in the corner.
If you memorize the ingredients of the topping, you’ll be able to whip one of these up any time and impress everyone you serve it to!
