The Best Fruit Crumble for Any Season

Welcome to Oh Yum! It's Bake Along time and I've got a super simple recipe. If you're ready to embrace whatever fruits are in season, then you need this recipe for peach raspberry crumble. I'll walk you through how to dress the fruit and make sure that you keep all the juices in place. The crumble topping, oh it's so simple to whip up. Before you know it, you're going to have this dessert in the oven, on the table. You better pull out the ice cream. It is time for peach raspberry crumble. So although I'm using fresh peaches because they're in season, you could certainly use frozen fruits in this recipe. You know, there's nothing wrong with frozen fruits because they are picked and frozen at their peak season. So then you can enjoy something like this crumble all year round. I've already peeled and diced my peaches. And at the same time, because it's peach season, it's raspberry season. So I have fresh local raspberries, but that too, you can use frozen. And what I do recommend if you're using frozen, pull them right from the freezer, toss them with your ingredients and put them in your baking dish, as opposed to thawing and draining them and losing all that beautiful juicy flavor by straining out your fruit. I do sweeten my fruit base a little bit with some brown sugar. And then because peaches especially let off a lot of juice when they cook, well so do raspberries, I'm adding potato starch. Just a little bit. You can also use tapioca starch. Cornstarch is an option, but you have to keep in mind that cornstarch needs to hit 212 Fahrenheit, so 100 Celsius, to fully activate and thicken those juices where potato or tapioca starch doesn't. So I find I get a more consistent, even syrup in my crumble when I'm using potato or tapioca starch. I do add a pinch of cinnamon and I add just a little lemon juice to round out the flavors. And I'll give this a toss, just so everything gets coated. It's so funny, this recipe, I love this recipe, but I had to cut it out of my upcoming cookbook, Anna Cooks. It launches on September 30th. When it came down to doing the edits for this cookbook, I had too many recipes for the number of pages that we could allot within the book. So I had to make some tough cuts and I'm so happy I can share this recipe with you today, even though it didn't make it in the cookbook. That said, if you pre-order a copy of Anna Cooks before September 30th, which is when the book comes out, well you can get an additional six bonus recipes. You can go in and claim this sort of mini cookbook by going to the link below, through my website, and it'll walk you through all the steps how to do it. But it's only if you pre-order the book before September 30th. Okay, see how juicy that fruit is? That goes into my dish. I aim for, I'm less specific about the size of the dish as opposed to its volume. So an eight cup dish leaves you lots of room. Even though this fits into a six cup dish, what I find sometimes is the fruit can bubble up and then bubble up and over your baking dish where an eight cup holds everything in place. So now it's time to make the crumble topping, which is about as easy as you can get. I'd say second easiest is making a crisp topping. So let's take a second and talk about the difference between a crumble, a crisp, and a cobbler. They're all fruit at the bottom, baked in the dish, desserts that you then scoop to serve at the table. A crisp uses rolled oats, usually has cinnamon in it, and brown sugar over the fruits. A cobbler is like a biscuit topping, a softer biscuit topping over the fruit. The steam from the fruit helps fluff up the biscuits, making them almost cake-like. Where a crumble earns its name because it is more like a cookie dough and it truly crumbles. It doesn't even come together when you put it on top of the fruit. But again, the fruit steams up, brings it together, and you get that beautiful sweetness. So I've got simply some all-purpose flour, brown sugar again. Let me just grab a pinch of salt. There we go. And I will be using a pastry blender. So I'll use that first just to bring everything, break down the brown sugar really. And now you want to work with cold butter because we want to produce this dry crumbly mixture. So I'm going to go grab that from the fridge. Here we go. And to work the butter in without overworking it or warming it up too much, I'm using my good old box grater that I've had forever and ever and ever. I like it because the teeth actually aren't too sharp. So I'm less likely to nick my finger, but it's perfect for grating this cold butter, which now looks like cheddar cheese, into the crumble. This is a great technique if you're making scones also. So you don't have to worry about dicing up your butter and keeping it cold. Just measure it and grate away. Make sure I'm getting all the butter from inside. Now back to using my pastry blender to break down the butter a bit. Fully coat it with the flour and don't expect this crumble to come together like a dough because it truly will remain a crumble. It's very basic and simple, but these sorts of fruit desserts are supposed to be. Another option if you wanted would be to measure all your ingredients into a food processor and then you would dice up the butter instead and just pulse it a few times to let it combine into the flour a little bit. I'm just going to break it down a little further. There we go. So now these little bits of flour coated butter are going to bake the fruit juices underneath, bubble up, kind of soften the mix mixture, but then it gets this nice crunchy cookie-like crust on the top of it. But I'm not done yet. In addition to just the plain crumble, I'm going to add some texture. I want to really build on that crunch with some pecan pieces. They can be untoasted if you want because the surface of the crumble has such exposure to the heat of the oven that the pecans will toast in the oven so you don't have to pre-toast them, which is one of those steps in a baking process that saves time. All right, this is ready to go on the fruit and you can really see those juices coming out. You can imagine as this bakes how juicy those peaches are going to get. Now just spread this crumble on top like so. There we go. And I'm going to pop this into a moderately hot oven, 375 Fahrenheit. It depends on the size of your baking dish and the fruit you've chosen to put underneath. I find this one takes between 35 and 45 minutes to bake. I look for a nice golden brown and some bubbling of the fruit at the edges. Here's what the fruit crumble looks like out of the oven. So you can see what I mean. It has that cookie-like browning at the edges. I do like to give this a good dusting with icing sugar before serving and I'll leave it up to you if you need a scoop of ice cream with this or a dollop of whipped cream. Let's see, is this still? Nope, it's cooled enough that I can scoop it. Let's see how that crumble does hold together and it kind of holds these beautifully thickened juices. You know, a little raspberry goes a long way in a dessert like this. Oh, how much am I scooping? That's about a reasonable single portion. I'll do a second one. A way Michael can enjoy. If I hadn't added the starch to the fruit mix, you'd see just a pool of beautiful peach but liquidy peach juices and this has thickened up perfectly. Let me grab a big spoon and there it is. An easy fruit crumble with the added touch of the buttery pecans capitalizing on your perfect fruit seasons. Peach season here is so short. I like to eat peaches every day while they're available and before you know it, I'll be stuck with apples for the next eight months. Thank you for joining me everyone. I'll see you again for another Bake Along, Cook Along or Coming Soon, Anna Cooks. That crumble topping makes sure that this dessert is all about the fruit. Give this recipe a try. Thanks for watching everyone. Bye-bye.