I don’t know about you, but after last week’s immense round-up of finding vegan food in London, I just fancied a nice home-made pudding. Something fruity and comforting, yet a little lighter and brighter for summer.
So I thought I’d share with you one of my absolute favourite crumble recipes. It’s so tasty, and really easy to make.
Not only that, but the flavour combination brings something a little different to the crumble classics of apple, blackberry or plum.
Plum crumble! Now there’s a shot of nostalgia.
Anyway…
Before I tell you just how great this pudding is, I need to confess that I’m really struggling to take photos in my light-deprived house. Photographing food is hard at the best of times, but trying to make brown food look good in a terraced facing-the-wrong-way house (even with camera lights) is darn near impossible. So apologies for the less than great photos – I can assure you wholeheartedly that this crumble tastes immensely more delicious than these pictures suggest!
I’m going to stop having a nervous breakdown now and tell you about the pudding.
This Pear, Blueberry and Pumpkin Seed Crumble is:
- juicy, fruity, the-right-kind-of-sweet delicious;
- crunchy and crisp;
- caramel-rich from a layer of salted dates;
- refined sugar-free;
- gluten-free (if you use gf oats);
- vegan; and
- nutty with pumpkin seeds.
And don’t be fooled into thinking crumbles are just the follow-up to Sunday dinner: I eat this one for breakfast!
This is also a fantastic ‘throw it all together when you don’t have a pudding plan’ recipe – I’ve made it so many times when I haven’t had time to do something in advance for dinner guests (even at Christmas). No stewing of fruit required.
It’s so simple. Just:
- chop the fruit;
- pile it all in a pie dish;
- mix oats and oat flour; and
- blitz some dates.
You can make it even simpler by using a ready-ground flour of your choice, and just chopping the dates yourself.
So here’s the recipe for this easy and delicious Pear, Blueberry and Pumpkin Seed Crumble. I hope you enjoy it!
- Filling
- 4 pears
- 125g blueberries
- Caramel
- 6 medjool dates
- 4 tbsp water
- ½ tsp good salt
- Topping
- 100g rolled oats (gluten-free if necessary), divided in half
- 40g pumpkin seeds, divided in half
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp good salt
- 1 tbsp coconut oil, melted
- 1-2 tbsp water, as needed
- Heat the oven to 180°C / 350°F / Gas Mark 4.
- Top and tail the pears, quarter them, remove the cores, then cut each quarter into 3.
- Arrange the pieces of pear and the blueberries into a pie dish.
- In a food processor, blend the dates, water and salt until you have a thick caramel. If you're not using a food processor, just chop the dates into small pieces (you'll probably want to omit the water and salt).
- Pour the caramel onto the fruit.
- To make the crumble topping, grind 50g of oats and 20g of pumpkin seeds into a flour using a food processor. Again, if you're not using a processor, use 50g of flour instead.
- Combine these in a bowl with the remaining 50g of oats, 20g of pumpkin seeds, cinnamon, salt, coconut oil and water. Stir it together until it clumps.
- Top the fruit and dates with the crumble and cook for 25 minutes. I like the pears to keep a bit of bite, so if you want completely soft fruit, cook for longer.
- Serve with some lovely non-dairy cream.
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