Apple and Blackberry Crumble

Nothing quite says 'Hello Autumn' like the first apple and blackberry crumble of the year, fresh from the oven and still bubbling - a true and timeless favorite.

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If you have ever headed out with a bucket, a tupperware box, an empty ice cream tub, and filled it with sweet, and delicious blackberries - otherwise known as bramble berries - then you have been foraging! Foraging often conjures up images of dangerous mushrooms and eating weeds, and often gives the impression of being quite dangerous, when in fact it can often be the very opposite!

Around 99% percent of the time, when I am out foraging, I am out with my children - my eldest, who is nearly four, is already becoming quite the forager and its quite at home along the hedgerow, picking flowers and gobbling blackberries straight from the bush. He doesn't always get the names exactly right, but he does remember and takes in way more than he appears to at the time - Ragwort he refers to as 'never never touch', and Dryad's Saddles are 'Fairy seat mushrooms'! He is learning more and more every day, and interacting with nature in ways I could only ever hope for.

He's been very excited about blackberry season and has been keeping an eye on the brambles for weeks now -plenty of taste testing has been going on! We've been on and off picking blackberries for about two weeks now from various walks and as we pass them and putting them in the freezer until we had enough. In a few weeks the hedgerows will be dripping with them and I won't have to worry about freezing them! We headed out the other day to our favorite apple trees and gathered just enough of a few early ripe ones to make our first crumble of the year.

This recipe is incredibly simple, and only requires a handful of ingredients, but it always has me coming back for a second helping! How much you need really depends on the size of the dish you plan to use, but the recipe below serves about six to eight people, depending on how generous you are with the helpings! If you like baking with apples, I would really recommend getting an apple peeler gadget, it makes the process of preparing apples much quicker! They're great if you like making dried apple rings as well! They're really simple to use, and with a watchful eye, it means little hands to help with the preparations as well.

You'll need about 1kg of fruit for this recipe, I used roughly 2 thirds apples, and 1 third blackberries, but it doesn't matter all too much. You could even add elderberries too which is equally delicious and there are plenty of them around at the moment. Just make sure to remove all the stalks from the berries and avoid eating them raw.

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Apple and Blackberry Crumble

Ingredients for the filling:

600g apples

400g blackberries

1-2 tbsp block butter ( I use stork)

100g light brown sugar

1tbsp corn flour

For the crumble:

300g plain flour

100g light brown sugar

200g block butter, cut into cubes

1. Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas Mark 4.

2. Peel the apples and roughly cut them into bitesize pieces. Melt 1-2 tablespoons of butter in a large pan and then add the fruit. Add the sugar and stir to mix well.

3. Leave the fruit over a medium heat until it has begun to soften.

4. Mix 1 tablespoon of corn flour with 2 tablespoons of water and add to the pan. Mix well until the liquid in the pan thickens slightly. Remove from the heat and add to the crumble dish.

5. Place the flour and sugar into a large bowl and mix well. Add the butter and rub in the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.

6. Fill the remainder of the dish with crumble and sprinkle the top with a little more sugar.

7. Bake in the oven for about 45 minutes, or until the crumble has browned and the fruit filling has begun to bubble out around the edges.