Spiced Roasted Pear and Apple Oat Crumble

I love pears. They are one of my favourite fruits (although, Ben will tell you that I have a lot of ‘favourites’!). This is one of my favourite crumbles and I make it a lot when we have a good glut of pears. I have included spicing in the recipe but feel free to adjust according to your taste – I have drastically reduced the amount of spice for this recipe, as I use far more spices than many people would like (another of my ‘favourites’ is cinnamon!). This crumble is slightly different as the topping consists only of oats, no flour, and it is cooked separately first to get it nice and crunchy. I would happily have this with yoghurt for my breakfast!

Ingredients

750g mixture apples and pears, peeled, cored and chopped

1 tbsp runny honey

Squeeze of lemon juice

1 tsp ground ginger

Crumble Mixture

200g oats

40g runny honey

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

½ tsp mixed spice

75g rapeseed oil

Pinch of salt

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C (fan assisted)/180°C.

2. Place the chopped fruit into an oven proof dish, squeeze over the lemon juice and mix in the ginger and tablespoon of honey.

3. Roast the fruit for approximately 10 minutes, or until the fruit is soft but still holds its shape. It will be cooked again with the crumble topping so you don’t want to cook it too much at this stage, just enough so that the fruit isn’t too hard.

4. Whilst the fruit is cooking, mix all of the crumble topping ingredients together and place on a tray. Remove the fruit and cook the topping at 170°C (Fan) /180°C for 15-20 minutes, or until turning golden. You do not want it too brown as it will be cooked again when added to the fruit.

5. Once cooked pour the topping over the fruit and bake for another 10-15 minutes, until golden and the fruit it hot.

6. Serve with custard, ice cream or yoghurt, or enjoy on its own.

Variations

Coconut oil can be used instead of the rapeseed oil, use refined coconut oil if you do not want the flavour of coconut, or use unrefined if you don’t mind the slight coconutty taste. To use, melt the oil, heating gently first and add to oats as above.

You could also add chopped nuts to the crumble mixture. Walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds all work well, either separately or together.

Add herbs - Pear and lavender work really well together. You could add a teaspoon of dried lavender flowers to the fruit mixture if you like. Lemon thyme leaves in the crumble mixture makes for a warming addition.

You can use the crumble topping on any other type of crumble. It works particularly well with rhubarb or plum crumbles.

Tips

The crumble topping mixture will keep well in a sealed container stored in a dark, cool place for up to a week. I often double the topping mixture, so I have some during the week to add with fruit and yoghurt.