This is one of the simplest recipes ever! Only four ingredients and
less than 15 minutes preparation time! At the end you will have a delicious but very simple
cherry crumble which will serve four
people.
A lot depends on the size of your casserole dish. The basic idea
is that the cherries occupy about, one half of the casserole
dish. It's no problem though if they occupy less than half of the dish.
KEY POINTS
Preparation Time:
Cooking Time:
(incl 15 cooling)
How Difficult
Medium
Freeze?
No
Servings
4 portions
INGREDIENTS
The ingredients below will make a medium sized cherry crumble, enough for
four people.
Notes for the Cook!
Do not use 'spreading' margarine, it is too moist. Use a 'cooking'
margarine such as Stork or use butter.
The cherry pie filling often overflows a bit round the edges of the
dish during cooking. It's advisable to put out some aluminium foil below the
dish to catch the drips - baked on cherry pie filling is terrible to
clean from your oven.
There is one 'trick'
described at the end to make the crumble surface look really brown and
nice, but please do keep an eye on the timing. A brown crumbly topping
looks absolutely delicious, but a black and burnt top is not so good.
Method
Turn your oven on now so that it's pre-heated ready to cook later on!
Heat settings are 180C / 350F / Gas Mark 5.
Mix the butter / margarine and flour in a bowl. A
fork is best for mixing but you can also use your hands or a food
processor.
The mixture should have a texture similar to
breadcrumbs when it is mixed well. It's not important that every
single bit is like breadcrumbs, but try and get most of it like
that. This will take about three minutes with a fork or hands, much
shorter in a food processor.
Add the sugar to the mixture and mix it all
together with the fork. This will make the mixture even more like
breadcrumbs.
Pour up to two cans of the cherry pie mixture into
the oven-proof dish.
Exactly how much will depend on the size of your dish. Do not
fill more than half the dish with the cherry pie mix.
Now, evenly spread
the 'crumble' mixture over the cherries (see picture on the
right).
Put this into the
middle of your pre-heated oven at 180C / 350F / Gas Mark 5 for around 40 minutes cooking
time.
One trick you can use now is to put the cooked
cherry crumble under a hot
grill for about 30 to 45 seconds to 'brown' the crumble topping.
Keep a good
eye on it though because 30 seconds too much can result in a very black
crumble topping!
When the cherry crumble is cooked, leave it to cool for at least 15 minutes.
Beware,
cherry crumble can stay really hot for an hour or so.
Serve hot
or cold with ice cream, cream or custard.
If there is any cherry crumble left over, cover the dish with tin foil and
it will keep in the fridge for a couple of days.
