Vegan and Gluten-Free Blackberry and Apple Crumble
I absolutely adore autumn, and I also adore the transition from the hot summer period with its lush green grasses and fields of golden wheat, into the cooler mornings and the red and crimson leaves of autumn. I feel that this transitional period gets forgotten about with social media and shops switching from one to the other overnight; this makes me sad as you will miss so much if you don’t slow down and enjoy watching the leaves slowly change and feel the air cooling around you in the mornings.
As a child, the biggest ritual in this transitional period was going out to collect blackberries to be made into pies and crumbles. We would often go with our friend Joe from the village and his mum, our mum or both. The best place to get blackberries was a long path that ran behind one of the village farms and we would spend hours filling our bellies and our baskets with bursting juicy berries.
As an adult, I am keen to keep this tradition alive for my children and so far they seem to adore it as much as I do, and I think Summer is enjoying revisiting the tradition too.
For the below recipe I felt like using the berries in a traditional apple and blackberry crumble would be of most use to people, and I’ve also done it with a gluten-free topping to make it extra flexible to all diets.
Ingredients
- 900g/2Ibs apples
- 100g/4oz blackberries
- Sprinkling of cinnamon
- 2 tbsp white sugar
- 150g/5oz plain gluten free flour (wheat flour works fine too)
- 75g/3oz oats – whizzed into a flour
- 75g/3oz vegan butter of choice – the colder the better
- 75g/3oz brown sugar
Method
- Preheat your oven to 180C. Get out and grease a pie dish, I use a 10-inch round one.
- Peel and chop your apples into roughly 2cm chunks and pop the pieces into your dish.
- Sprinkle with your blackberries, cinnamon and white sugar and give a gentle mix.
- In a large bowl add your gluten free flour and whizzed oats. Chop your cold vegan butter into the dish and rub it into the flour using your finger tips.
- Once you have incorporated it all in and it looks like breadcrumbs stir in your brown sugar and sprinkle the mixture over the appples and blackberries.
- Place into the preheated oven and cook for about 40 minutes, until the top is a beautiful golden colour, and – if you are lucky – there is a bit of juice bubbling around the sides.
- I love to enjoy my crumble with custard but Paul prefers ice cream so we tend to have both options available.
I hope you enjoy this beautiful season and please do let us know if you give this recipe a try, either in the comments or over on Instagram @foxandlockes. I’d also love to know if you are a custard or ice cream person!
Happy baking,
Livvy and Summer
