Mulberry Infused Apple Crumble

One of my sisters-in-law gave me a bag of mulberries on Tuesday so I thought I'd make a mulberry and apple crumble. Things didn't go exactly as planned though but I was pleased with my fix :-)

I stewed the apples and mulberries last night and didn't think to take photos - sorry.

What I did was peel, core and slice the apples into a pot. Next I spent ages getting rid of the stalks in the mulberries and added them to the pot. I thought my hands and fingers would be permanently purple after that messy job. I added some caster sugar and because the mulberries were quite juicy I only added a tiny amount of water.

The problems begain as the mulberries started cooking, they fell apart and turned into mush and hundreds of tiny little white seeds were released - YUK. Because the apples had held their shape and not gone mushy I decided to rinse off each piece individually to get rid of the mulberry mush and seeds which, while tedious, was worth it because I wouldn't fancy seeing all the seeds in the crumble.

After I'd finished that tedious job I had a brainwave about how to prevent having to deal with the seeds and mush in the future. As I still had some mulberries left I decided I needed to try iy out now as I might not get any more mulberries until next year.

I peeled and chopped more apples and cut a double layer of muslin, tipped the rest of the mulberries in the centre, gathered up all the edges and tied it securely with string. I then added the muslin bag to the apples along with some caster sugar and a couple of tablespoons of water and cooked them.

The fruit stewed in their own juices and I kept squishing the muslin bag to release all the mulberry juice. This method worked really well and there was not mushy mulberries or little whit seeds to deal with. I didn't even have to remove the stems.

Crumble recipe

Cast of characters

• 200g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder - I realised later that I forgot to add this - oops
• 100g cold butter cut into cubes
• 6 teaspoons Demerera (I'll check the spelling on this one) I didn't have any so I used brown sugar 

Rub the flour and baking powder together with the butter using fingertips until mix resembles coarse sand, add sugar and mix to combine.

Put stewed fruit in ovenproof dish, cover with crumble mix.

Bake until golden brown.

Serve with ice cream - yum.

Review

Because I only added a small amount of caster sugar to the fruit it was not overly sweet which I liked and I loved how the mulberry juice made the apples red. I would definitely make this again.