Recipe: Single serve apple crumble

I had a few comments intrigued about a Facebook picture I put up last night of my dessert that I cooked up from an idea that I blatantly stole from MasterChef New Zealand.
Specifically, what the thing on the left is. The short answer is, an apple crumble.

It's a pretty terrible picture really.

Now, you probably have your own various fruit crumble recipes but this is the recipe I more or less used. If you think things can be done better, let me know, I might try it out or I might just change what I've written here. It's all a little sketchy because I was kinda making it up as I went along, but oh well, here goes!

This recipe is just for a single serve. Increase the recipe depending on how many people you want to serve and tada!



Ingredients

Apple filling:

• 1 apple
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of brown sugar (more/less depending on taste)
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon (more/less depending on taste)

Crumble:

• ⅓ cup of flour
• 25g of butter
• 1 tablespoon of sugar

Method:

Preheat your oven to 200°C.

I used a jazz apple because it was on hand, but really, anything works and there are probably better choices.

Take your apple, cut it into quarters, core it, then thinly slice it, then cut each slice in half again. You can maybe skin it if you like, but I didn't.

Should look a bit like this when sliced.

Put your apple slices into a microwave proof bowl, add a tablespoon of sugar and microwave it for 5 minutes.

Yes, my microwave is dirty. Shush.

While this is going on, start making the crumble. Combine the flour and cut up the button into little cubey bits, then get your hands dirty and combine them into a fine breadcrumby sort of thing, then add the tablespoon of sugar and mix well.

This is not actually ⅓ of a cup of flour. This is, in fact, the leftover half a cup or so of flour from the one I made the night before because for some really dumb reason, I thought a whole cup of flour would work. Half a cup is still a bit much, so I said a third for this recipe.

It'll probably look a bit like this when mixed, except probably better.

Now comes the tricky part. You need to get an empty tin of anything. Spaghetti, pasta sauce, fruit, anything works. The only thing is you have to be able to remove both ends of the tin without having either end be sharp (For safety reasons). You'll need one tin per serve.

An example tin. That white you see at the bottom is, in fact, the cutting board, not part of the tin.

Wrap one end of the tin in baking paper. If you've got a decent way to safely tie the baking paper closed, that'll help but if not, you can kinda just sit the tin on the baking paper on an oven-proof tray. Grease the inside of the tin. Personally, I think that cooking oil spray is the best thing since sliced bread.

I've tied it closed, but some actual butcher's twine or some string that doesn't melt in an oven would've worked much better for me.

Spoon the apple into the tin and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon.

The apple after it's been microwaved. It comes out much softer like this. The recipe I kinda based this on called for stewed fruit, microwaving does the trick pretty well.

Adding the apple.

Squash it down a bit, then add the crumble on top. Bake for 15 minutes or so.

With the crumble on top.

Once cooked, remove the baking paper carefully and put the tin, apple-side down into the plate.

It should look a bit like this when cooked.

Carefully remove the tin and serve with a scoop of ice cream.

Put the tin in the plate like so, kinda. I found it to be easier to remove the baking paper with the tin in the plate.

And with the tin removed! You'll probably have less crumble on the top because, I said earlier, I used too much flour.

Tada! Easy, fancy dessert.

Bon appetit! Or, in English, om nom nom nom nom.