Every year, we take our kids (at least a few times) to Hickory Nut Gap Farm, a local farm that has been in the same family for many generations, and a great place to spend the day. There are animals to see, a barn that is piled to the ceiling with hay for kids to play in and ropes to swing on, you can ride a pony, get your face painted, go through a corn maze, and go home with all the apples you could ever eat. We went last weekend for the first time this fall, and came home with a whole bushel. I set to work immediately making apple treats, including this apple crumble. Which was so delicious, it was gobbled up before I could get photos of it! Let me tell you how upset I was that I had to make it again.
I used a combination of apples from the farm, including Mutsu, Fuji, Rome and Granny Smiths. The recipe calls for a cup of sugar - a cup!!! - in the filling. Excessive, no? I will never understand why there is always so much sugar in fruit desserts. Anyway, I cut that sugar out entirely. I never put any in my apple pies and they're always delicious, and they don't even have any sweetener in the crust. This crumble has a full 3/4 cup sugar - palm sugar for me - in the topping, so I knew it would be plenty sweet.
The flavor of the palm sugar was so incredible in the topping - it tastes almost molasses-y, and was such a wonderful complement to the apples and spices. It is a wonder any of the topping actually got baked, because I kept nibbling on it before it went into the oven.
Unfortunately, it is not the most attractive dessert, but it sure is delicious, and easy to make. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of it in our house.
Please visit Cristine Cooks for the recipe. Thank you, Cristine for hosting this week and for picking such a fantastic recipe!
It looks plenty attractive to me! I am going to have to get braver about messing with ingredients and not following things exactly b/c I think you are right about the amount of sugar in things. This dessert looks absolutely wonderful.
ReplyDeleteI love how your crumble looks. I have never worked with palm sugar before. Might have to try that.
ReplyDeleteI was eating the crumble topping too! Your photos are great.
ReplyDeleteSounds delicious. Loosks great.
ReplyDeleteWe get so used to eating lots of sugar we often don't think about it. I am trying to cut back.
Your crumble looks delicious! I agree, it's not the most photogenic dessert ever, but it's so tasty!
ReplyDeleteYUMMY!I agree, the topping was so good. I think I might just make the topping as breakfast.
ReplyDeleteIt looks attractive enough for me to be craving some right now! That is a lot of sugar - apples are so nice and sweet as-is.
ReplyDeleteYour crumble looks delish!! I'm so glad that you told me you left the sugar out of the filling entirely because it convinced me to at least halve it in my recipe and I thought it was plenty sweet with only half of the sugar (which is saying a lot - I have a crazy sweet tooth). This is one of my favorites from the Sweet Melissa Book and I suspect I'll be making it again soon with some of my orchard apples :) Your orchard trips sound super fun!
ReplyDeleteI have never tried palm sugar. Now I am curious. You know a dessert is delicious is the whole thing is gone before you were able to get pictures! Well, your second apple crumble looks perfect and yummy too.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear that it still turned out without the sugar in it. I tend to cut back on sugar in fruit desserts because the fruit is so sweet on its own, but I wasn't sure how it would turn out cutting the sugar completely. That dollop of whipped cream looks wonderful too!!
ReplyDeleteYou've made me what a nice big slice of warm apple something! I left something for you on my blog btw :)
ReplyDelete"molasses-y" i'm glad that i'm not the only one to add a 'y' to the end of a word and declare it my own :)
ReplyDeletegreat crumble!!
The apple farm sound like a lot of fun! Your crumble looks fantastic. I reduced the sugar to half a cup and it was still very sweet. I'm curious about trying palm sugar, if I ever see it, I'm definitely going to pick some up.
ReplyDeleteIt looks good to me! Great pics!
ReplyDeleteI'm so digging the color of your crumble. And that topping - YUM-O!
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