Since last year when most of my students were two-year-olds and significantly more truculent around the food and one another, I’ve held in the back of my mind a vision of how and when to teach them to make and roll out pie crust. My own daughter already knows the basics. She requested a pie-making session the other day, “Because it’s starting to get verrrrrrry chilly, Mama, and when it gets chilly, we get to make pies.”
While most families might make pie all year round, with a peak in Summer when the berries, peaches and such are ripe and ready, Mira is absolutely right. Pie, for us, is a Winter staple and a feast food. Our Summer dessert days, instead, are marked with ice cream cones or balsamic berries with cream. If we are going to go all out and actually make a warm dessert, we make crumbles instead. In fact, crumbles sustain our family’s treat nights pretty much all year round, even in the darkest, hungriest months in which we’re forced to move to frozen fruits.
Before I give the recipe for our crumble, I would like to say that making a crumble requires more feeling than accuracy or recipe. The truth is that crumble-making is so simple that it requires you only to relate to the ingredients you have on hand. If the fruits are juicier, put a couple more tablespoons of flour and/or butter in with the fruit to firm things up. And please, please feel free to improvise with whatever you like and whatever is available in season.
On Wednesday the last of the plums at the greenmarket were looking orphaned, so I adopted them to vamp up our crumble. In our class, too, we have a mini-chef with nut allergies, so there are absolutely no nuts in this recipe. When I’m making it for my own family, I chop or grind pecans and almonds and mix them in with the crumble top. The kids have definitely got the making things by feeling part down. I see pie crusts on the horizon.
Autumn Fruit Crumble with Frangelico Whipped Cream
For the crumble:
*2 c. apples, peeled cored and sliced fairly thin
*2 c. pears, peeled cored and sliced fairly thin
*1 c. plums, washed well, pitted and cut into chunks
*the juice of a half of a lemon
*1/3 cup of brown sugar, packed
*2 c. all purpose flour (or a mixture of any other flours: gluten free, spelt, almond, etc.)
*1 t. baking powder
*1/2 t. salt
*1 t. cinnamon
*a couple of big handfuls of rolled oats
*2 T. flaxseed meal
*1 t. vanilla
*8 T. (1/2 c.) unsalted butter, chopped into 10-12 chunks and chilled
For the Whip:
*2 c. heavy cream***
*1 t. vanilla
*1 T. Frangelico (optional but highly recommended)
*2 T. maple syrup
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Paint a 9×13 inch baking pan with butter with your mini-chef.
More Mini-chef: In a large bowl, toss the fruit with the lemon juice and a tablespoon of the brown sugar. Encourage your mini-chef to toss the fruit with his hands and talk about how the lemon juice has to cover every single piece of fruit in the bowl. Let your Yummy arrange the fruit in the baking dish as he sees fit.
Now in a medium-large bowl, whisk together the rest of the brown sugar, the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder, oats and flaxseed meal. Set out two safe knives to work with, and then go to the fridge and pull out your butter. Your mini-chef can drop the butter pieces into the flour mixture. You will both take ahold of the knives and begin cutting the butter into smaller pieces as you cover those smaller pieces with flour. (You can also, of course, use a pastry cutter if you happen to have one.) Once the butter pieces look like the oft-mentioned “small peas,” your work is done.
Sprinkle the flour-butter mixture over the fruit till the fruit is completely hidden.
Big Person: Put the crumble into the oven and bake till the top is golden brown, about an hour.
Together: Meanwhile, place the cream, vanilla, and the Frangelico in a medium sized bowl. Using either a hand-held mixer or a wire whisk and some elbow grease, beat the cream till it begins to set up a bit. Then add the maple syrup slowly. Refrigerate till ready to serve.
When the crumble is out of the oven and has cooled for a few minutes, spoon individual serving onto plates or into bowls and top it with the cream.
***If you have dairy allergies or are Vegan, you can make a simple vegan topping using soy yogurt and the rest of the whipped cream ingredients listed above. You might want to add a touch more maple syrup to counter the tang of the soy yogurt.
This morning I found myself up early to take the Pan de Muerto, or “Bread of the Dead,” dough out of its nest in the refrigerator to roll into balls and bake. Baking has always been a form of meditation or prayer for me. So often, when I am baking something, I’m also remembering the person who taught me that recipe, a meal we shared, or the particularites of a friend or family member’s palate.
