French Food Friday...Le Crumble

photo and recipe from here

Bonjour mes belles,

Le crumble is a great dessert that the French have adopted courtesy of Angleterre and you will find in on a lot of French restaurant's menus.

This week's recipe was created by the fabulous Raymond Blanc and makes for an easy yet very yummy dessert and goes nicely with a boule of vanilla ice-cream.

Ingredients

For the crumble topping
120g	Butter, unsalted, cold, cut in to 2cm pieces
120g	Plain flour
60g	Caster sugar
60g	Demerara sugar
For the pear & ginger compote
20g	Water
80g	Caster sugar
60g	Unsalted butter
600g	Pears, ripe, cored, diced 2-3cm
5g	Ginger grated

Method

Planning ahead
You can prepare the crumble topping 1 day in advance and the pears can be cooked ready to be baked with the crumble topping.
Making the crumble
Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC. In a large bowl, with your fingertips, rub the softened butter into the flour and sugar for about 4 minutes until the mixture forms a light breadcrumb texture (*1). Sprinkle the crumble topping on an oven tray and cook in the pre-heated oven to lightly colour for 15minutes. Remove and reserve (*2).
For the pear & ginger compote
In a large saucepan (26cm) add the water then the sugar so it slowly absorbs and becomes a syrup.  On a medium high heat, cook the syrup to a very pale blond caramel (*3). Add the butter, the apples and cook for 6-8 minutes (*4), stir in the ginger, pour in to a gratin dish (*5) and leave to cool.
Final cooking Serving
Top the cooled fruit with the crumble mix (about 1cm thick) and bake in the oven for 10 minutes.  Serve with vanilla or cinnamon ice cream.

...très bon vendredi à tous, Leeann x