Apple & Blackcurrant Crumble

An Easy Eastern European Inspired Dessert - Extra Food Chat with Kath

Welcome to another edition of Extra Food Chat with Kath!

I have another new recipe for you this week, this time a simple dessert perfect for the cooler weather we are having now.

As you may have noticed I am having a bit of a moment with Eastern European cuisine and ingredients.

There are a couple of books that have inspired me recently on this topic, namely Sour Cherries and Sunflowers by

Anastasia Zolotarev

and Kupusta by

Alissa Timoshkina

. I have made a few things from Sour Cherries and Sunflowers, and when I was making the Blackcurrant Apple and Pear version of Anastasia’s crumble recipe last weekend, I wondered how I could adapt my own crumble recipe to showcase some of the Eastern European flavours and ingredients I have come to really enjoy recently.

Apple Pear and Blackcurrant Crumble from Anastasia Zolotarev’s book Sour Cherries and Sunflowers. This recipe has a thick layer of crumble which is delicious and lasts well in the fridge for leftovers.

Anastasia’s crumble was delicious, though maybe slightly too big for our three person household! The leftovers lasted for 5 days, as I was the only one eating it some days (lucky me!). I will be making it again as it’s quite different from the quick and easy crumbles I usually make.

But I thought it could be nice to bring some of the elements from that recipe, and Eastern European cuisine generally to the crumbles I normally make. Here is an Apple and Strawberry version of my crumble recipe plus a Stone Fruit one too, something I whip together quickly and easily especially on weeknights when there isn’t much time or energy for too much chopping and cooking.

I usually make smaller sized crumbles, as I mentioned our household is only three people so it works well for us. I often use the round baking dish pictured for my crumbles, it isn’t too big and isn’t very deep which is perfect for this kind of recipe where the fruit isn’t being cooked before baking.

To give my crumble a nod to Eastern Europe, I added blackcurrants and substituted some of the flour in the crumble for rye flour (which is very much inspired by Anastasia’s recipe!). The blackcurrants were frozen, so use whatever you can find. As I’ve found having a supply of blackcurrants in the freezer is quite a good thing - there are so many recipes that use them!

The blackcurrants give the crumble a nice tart yet sweet flavour, which will pair excellently with vanilla ice cream - which I had none of for this recipe, our freezer is too full of bread to fit anything else let alone a tub of ice cream! The combination of rye flour and dark brown sugar in the crumble topping give it a nice deep colour and flavour.

Depending on the size of your baking dish, you could up the apples to three, especially if they are smaller. Pears will also work well, and you could also add in other berries or similar along with less blackcurrants (about 1.5 cups of berries/blackcurrants in total). But really, you can take this recipe in many different directions depending on what fruit you have available to you.

I also usually splash over some vanilla extract to give the fruit some additional flavour and get a bit of sauce going once it’s in the oven. This time, despite having a bottle of vanilla extract right in front of me, I completely forgot to add it. I only realised when the crumble was in the oven, and it was too late. You can add it if you wish, but it’s also fine to leave out as well.

The edited and tested recipe for this Apple and Blackcurrant Crumble is below for paid subscribers.

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