apple and raspberry crumble

i cant come up with anything really coherent to say – about this crumble (which i felt to be disturbingly good and completely inspired) or anything else for that matter. i got broken by an unfortunate train of abuses, principally among them, physical exertion to the point of paralysis and because of, or perhaps as a result of that, intellectual stasis which has left me entirely unable to finish this sentence. so i will give to you this recipe which i made up – and i love love love it. and if my brain hadn’t melted i would tell you why. but as it is, i cannot and so i suggest you make it for yourself and see.

ingredients

2 apples

1 punnet of raspberries

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

tsp vanilla extract

60g melted butter

100g chocolate chopped (either white – if youre using raspberries because obviously. or dark – dark with raspberries would also be a delight)

preheat oven to 190 degrees. melt the butter in a saucepan and set aside.

mix together the flour, salt, sugar, baking soda and baking powder in a bowl. add some cinnamon if you choose. i chose no.

pour over the melted butter. the original recipe had 85g melted butter but it was too much and it started to get too wet. i then had to add more flour. so i say 60g and i think thats probably right. but just check its consistency. should be like wet sand. not a wet mixture though.

then add chopped up chocolate.

put raspberries and apples into ramekins and fill to nearly the top.

crumble over the crumble.

bake for 20-30 minutes.

raspberry and caramelised white chocolate cakes

i recently happened upon a moralistic, self righteous blog about correctly crediting recipes. and i dont like that kind of sermonising…about anything really. to misappropriate the immortal words of pipi longstocking: “how can you sell a recipe? you cant wrap it up, you cant carry it away and you certainly cant put it in your car.” not quite the point but as margurite, the great spokeswoman for the great intellectual organisation Resistance put it (every single saturday morning on the steps of flinders street station), “a seed is not a tree”…and so it follows that an amalgamation of ingredients is not a recipe. its an idea. a spark. and for these caramelised white chocolate cakes my spark was stolen. and not credited. adapted. but even if it werent i wouldnt apologise for it. if this post seems a bit obnoxious and bolshy, it might be on account of the amount caramelised white chocolate i consumed this evening. i also used some raspberries. fresh ones. ten dollars a raspberry. highly unseasonal. highly unlocal. highly unfriendly. but mainly delicious. im not going to lie – caramelising white chocolate is no easy thing and its slow. but worth every minute.

ingredients (makes about 4-8 ramekins, the small ones. i halved the original recipe.)

85g almond meal or ground almond

55g plain flour

pinch of salt

170g caramelised white chocolate (warm)

22.5g butter

22.5g sugar

2 eggs

to caramelise the chocolate: heat the oven to 120C. break up the chocolate into small bits. put it in the oven to warm for ten minutes. remove and spread it with a spatula – it will melt as you spread it. its not easy to move around but no one ever said it was gonna be easy.

put back in the oven for another ten minutes. then remove and mix again.

repeat this until the chocolate starts to turn a golden brown colour. mine took about an hour – with mixing/spreading at ten minute intervals.

it might be lumpy or grainy but if you put it in a bowl and stir your brains out, it should smoothen up. yes. smoothen.

to make the cakes, preheat oven to 190 degrees. mix together the flour, almond meal and salt and set aside.

mix the melted butter into the warm caramelised chocolate mixture. then add the sugar and the eggs and whisk like madness.

fold the flour into the chocolate mix and stir to combine

pour into ramekins and fill just over 2/3 the way up. i filled about a quarter of the way up and then placed raspberries on top and then filled the rest up.

put into preheated oven for 12-15 minutes.

theres a fine line between moist and uncooked. but as an eater and supporter of raw everything – cookie dough, cake mix, muffin mix, pastry dough et al, its one i like to tread. and indeed i did. so much so i might suggest you leave them in for a bit longer. until golden and cooked on top and slightly less so in the centre. fin.