Pear and blackberry almond crumble

Crumble must be the ultimate autumnal pudding and here, Jane-Anne Hobbs Rayner, shares her recipe to inspire your heart-warming Eat For The Earth lunch.

Jane-Anne’s Eat For The Lunch menu:

Iced beetroot and gin shots

Slow-cooked Moroccan-style beef and apricot stew with naartjie and chickpea couscous

Pear and blackberry almond crumble

If you’re faced with a fruit bowl full of pears which are going to be ripe and perfect for precisely the next two nanoseconds before they collapse into brown fur, try this pretty crumble pudding.

Ingredients (serves 6-8):
For the filling:
1 small lemon
8 pears
1 punnet blackberries (about a cup and a half)
60ml (4 tbsp) white sugar or caster sugar

For the crumble:
200g cake flour
150g cold butter, cut into cubes
100g (about 1/2 cup) white sugar or caster sugar
50g flaked almonds, plus a few tablespoons extra for topping

Method:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
2. Squeeze the lemon juice into a 28cm-diameter pie dish. Now peel and core the pears, and cut them into wedges.
3. Add the pear slices to the lemon juice in the pie dish so they don’t go brown. Scatter the blackberries over the pears and then sprinkle with the sugar. Set aside.
4. Put the flour and the butter into a food processor fitted with a metal blade and process until it resembles fresh, fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and the rest of the flaked almonds. Pulse in the food processor until the almonds are well ground.
5. Cover the fruit with the crumble mixture, making sure that every piece of fruit is covered (but don’t press down on the topping). Break up any claggy bits by fluffing them with a fork.
6. In the meantime, heat a frying pan, add the remaining flaked almonds and toss over a medium heat until golden and toasted.
7. Bake at 180°C for 40-45 minutes, or until the topping is crisp and the fruit juices are beginning to seep from the edges. Sprinkle with the toasted almonds.

Serve with cream or custard – or both. Download printable version of this recipe.

And there we have it. Easy as pie… or crumble.

Thanks to Jane-Anne.