Pear and Berry Crumble and a Birthday

I turned 21 on Tuesday, and of course I needed to bake something for the occasion. What’s a birthday without some home made sweetness to munch on? I had a lovely dinner with my parents, grandparents and aunt on Monday, and made an absolutely delicious crumble for dessert. It included all kinds of berries and a couple of pears. Read on for the recipe!

On Tuesday I celebrated my birthday with a few of my closest friends. They came over for dinner, and of course this called for another really great dessert. I had already figured out what I wanted to make a couple of weeks ago. It was something really simple but also really pretty and so tasty. I made a couple of brownies (recipe) in my muffin tin, added a perfect scoop of vanilla ice cream, and topped if off with some chocolate sauce and a fresh raspberry. One of my friends is lactose intolerant, so I bought raspberry sorbet for her, which also tasted really good. I was pretty proud of how it turned out to look!

One last birthday related thing I want to share with you all is two of the presents I received. I’ve talked about how much I love Roald Dahl’s Matilda a couple of times before, and about how I still wanted a nice English edition of the book… Guess what my parents gave me? A really gorgeous edition! And my cousin got me a very nice book as well; a cookbook from The Hummingbird Bakery. I’ve already looked through it, and it features some absolutely mouthwatering recipes! I’ll definitely be trying some of those in the future.

Anyway, enough about my birthday. Let’s get on with the crumble recipe!

You’ll need…

– 400 g pears

– 400 g assorted berries (raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries etc.)

– 100 g plain flour

– 50 g almond meal

– 100 g cane sugar

– ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

– 100 g salted butter, in cubes (room temperature)

– a pinch of salt

– zest of half a lemon

– almond flakes

– an oven/casserole dish

– and an oven, of course! This crumble needs to be baked at 180 °C (don’t forget to preheat your oven!)

So, let’s get baking!

1. Mix together everything except the fruit and almond flakes This really is a very easy recipe to make. For this first step, take a bowl and put in the flour, almond meal, cinnamon, cane sugar, butter and salt and mix everything together. This won’t work very well if you try to use a spoon or a whisk. Perhaps an electric mixer would work, but the best way to me seems to just use your hands, since the crumble will become quite dough-y.

2. Prepare the fruit and the dish Peel your pears, cut them into pieces and put them into a bowl with the berries and the lemon zest. Now, butter your oven dish, and then transfer the pears and berries into it. Make sure the pears and berries are mixed, so you don’t get all berries on one side and all pear on the other (except if that’s what you want).

3. Add the crumble to the dish and sprinkle with almond flakes Now, it’s time to divide the crumble you just made over the dish. It’s okay to still see fruit through the crumble, just make sure it’s evenly spread out over it. Now, as a finishing touch, sprinkle some almond flakes over the top.

4. Bake that crumble! Put your dish into your preheated oven, and bake the crumble for about 25 to 30 minutes (the top needs to be slightly golden brown). There will be a lot of juice at the bottom of the dish, but that’s okay, it’s meant to be that way.

And that’s your crumble! I suggest serving it while it’s still warm with a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream or some whipped cream. Enjoy!