It was a very rainy Friday when I arrived in North Queensferry to meet my pal Cat for a walk. We would rather have sat in a cosy cafe drinking coffee and eating cake but there was no room at the only inn in the village so we were forced to settle for takeaway coffee and a proper drenching. As we gamely continued on our coastal walk we noted that one side of the path was completely covered in beautiful, juicy, ripe blackberries. I have never seen so many in one place before. So being resourceful, we swigged down the remains of our coffee and set about filling the cup with fruit.

This is not the first time I have picked blackberries BUT it is the first time the fruit has not languished in the fridge until mouldy. I think the only thing that pushed me to actually follow through with making something from these fresh beauties was a timely facebook post from Cat showing a fabulous crumble using her pickings. Not to be outdone, the Grumbling Tummy followed suit. I didn’t really follow a recipe to make the crumble so I may have broken some crumble making rules.

INGREDIENTS

4 medium green apples

A splash of fresh apple juice

Cup of fresh blackberries

3 tbs of caster sugar

75g of plain flour

75g of porridge oats

30g of soft brown sugar

Around 60g of soft butter

METHOD

Pop the apples, apple juice and caster sugar into a pan and simmer gently for around 20 minutes (or until nice and soft)

pour the apples into your crumble dish

Mix in the butter to the flour crumbling with your fingers until it looks almost like breadcrumbs. Fold in the oats and brown sugar.

Add in your blackberries with the apple mix and top with the the crumble mix.

Bake in the over for around 25 minutes or until the top is all golden and the fruit is starting to bubble up around the edges

THE VERDICT

The inclusion of oats in the topping makes a nice change but perhaps a little less indulgent than a traditional crumble topping. It did taste great and I felt a tiny bit smug having made it a touch more virtuous. The fruit in the crumble was absolutely delicious and I am definitely keen to do some more fruit foraging (rain optional). We had the crumble with custard – very traditional and Mr G T’s favourite. MY preferred accompaniment to any hot pud is whole milk. Have you tried it? Its not to be missed. Good in a crumble but heaven with a hot sponge such as Eves Pudding where the ice cold creamy milk soaks into the hot sponge.

So get out there, forage and create!