Crumble.

I had a request for my crumble topping recipe from Woolywoman. And a query "What is crumble?" from an anonymous poster. Am I to take it from this crumble is either unknown or (more likely) called something else over the Atlantic?

Anyhow, Fruit Crumble recipe, adapted from the venerable Be-Ro Flour Home Recipes, 40th Edition.

500g g (16 oz) fruit (cooking apples, rhubarb, gooseberries, brambles or similar.)
Sugar to taste, for sweetening above. I like quite a tart fruit layer, to contrast with the sweet topping.
50 g (2 oz) margarine
100 g (4 oz) wholemeal flour
50 g (2 oz) sugar
75g (3oz)pinhead oatmeal.

(Sorry, I never got my head round US measurements.)

1 Heat oven to 190ºC, 375ºF, Gas Mark 5.
2 Place prepared sweetened chopped fruit shallow ovenproof dish.
3 Rub fat into flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.
4 Add sugar and pinhead oatmeal, mix thoroughly and spread evenly over the fruit.
5 Bake for about 30 minutes until fruit is cooked and top is golden.

Hope you like it. It's best served with custard. Very traditional pudding!

Talking of traditional, I'm amazed and pleased to discover the Be-Ro recipe book online. This too is one of these old-fashioned things that a great many of us here will remember from way back. The little Be-ro recipe books were sold in the grocers shops alongside their flours for sixpence or a shilling back in my childhood (I'm 49) or you sent away for them enclosing a stamp and three coupons from the back of the packet. I learned to bake out of one of these back in the 60's when I lived in India and Turkey. It was an interesting contrast to be turning out Drop Scones and Bakewell Pudding in scorching heat! Plus I think every home made birthday cake any of my family has ever had came from one or the other Be-ro book.

I lost mine a few years ago but wrested one of my mother's two copies from her. The 25th edition, if I recall...she's keeping the older one till she dies, she says. This is her older one, the one I remember from my childhood. (Image courtesy of the Be-Ro website.)



And here are all the others.We're still on the 40th edition, it seems, which is the one I currently have. I found it on sale in a supermarket in Wales six or seven years back. I was thrilled! Of course, all you still need to do is buy two bags of their flour and send the coupon off, but this simple method hadn't occurred to me. So mum got her 25th Aniversary Edition back, lol.

It's funny to see it on-line, belive me, because it's such a strong childhood memory for me. Of course Be-Ro flour is still a market leader and this is the 21st century, so why not? Thanks for reminding me of all this though, Woolywoman. :-)