The double-edged sword of eating with the seasons is the glut. A blunt, un-pretty word, which is a joy in theory and delicious in result, but which can feel daunting when you’re facing down a bench full of berries to be picked over, or countless apples to be processed.
My husband and I were once given an apple tree as a present. It’s a multi-graft, meaning each of the three branches produces a different type of apple: russets, for storing, bramleys, for cooking, and tart eating apples. This is the first year that it’s thrown up more than three measly apples. Well, it’s made up for lost time; we are, to put it mildly, drowning in apples.
It’s a little lighter than a crumble, and the layering means the breadcrumbs and cooked fruit meld together
I’m always on the hunt for new and delicious ways to use up this bounty. It’s impossible, of course, to make your way through so much ripe fruit before it goes bad. A small proportion of it is eaten fresh, often before it even makes it inside the house, and some of my fruit ends up in jams, or is stewed into compotes. However, much of it is portioned and frozen, with an eye to the future. What to do with frozen fruits that won’t make my family roll their eyes at the repetition?
Don’t get me wrong: I love a crumble. It’s the combination of bubbling, syrupy, soft fruit giving up their juices, flavours becoming more complex, more perfumed – honey-ed, floral, earthy – under the application of heat, topped with sweet, salty, oaty, crunchy crumble, all without the faff of making a pie.
But sometimes, after the ninth crumble in a row, I’m looking for novelty. And where we have the humble crumble, America have so many free-form fruit puddings that they require their own taxonomy.
They have crisps, which are almost indistinguishable from our crumbles. Then there are cobblers, which use biscuit (or scone) batter, dolloped across the top of the fruit, then baked in the oven until golden and firm and cobbled. Or slumps and grunts, which uses a similar batter to the cobbler but cooks on the hob, so that while it simmers the fruit sounds like it’s grunting, and when served it tends to slump across the plate.
A buckle also takes its name from its appearance: very wet cake batter is poured over lots of fruit; the amount of fruit, combined with the wetness of the batter, means the top ‘buckles’ as it bakes. Then there’s a sonker, from North Carolina, which covers the fruit in a pancake-like batter; it always makes me think of a clafoutis. Or there’s the charmingly named pandowdy, which has a broken pastry topping, patchworked across the top.
But my favourite is the Brown Betty, which layers fruit with buttery, sweetened breadcrumbs. It’s a little lighter than a crumble, and the layering means that the breadcrumbs and cooked fruit meld together, each enhancing the other.
Apple is the most common filling and what I have used here. But the first Brown Betty I made was with rhubarb, and I’m planning to use up the last of our blackberries in one this weekend. Really, any fruit which softens as it cooks is fair game. You can swap in 600g prepared weight (stoned or peeled and cored) of any fruit which will cook down.
My Brown Betty uses light brown sugar, which gives an edge of caramelisation, and brioche crumbs, which are not traditional, but their richness is welcome against the tart apple. In fact, some recipes use cake crumbs in place of bread. Whether you’re using bread, brioche or cake, the crumbs should be staled in advance, to prevent them becoming claggy when mixed with the butter: I simply slice it and leave the cut sides exposed.
Traditionally, a Brown Betty is served with hard sauce – the same as our brandy butter. But if you’d like to make your own, or use bourbon or rum in place of the brandy, beat together 150g softened butter with75g icing sugar, and slowly add four tablespoons of brandy, rum or whisky, one at a time, until combined.
Serves: 4
Hands-on time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 50 minutes
- 10 tart apples
- 175g brioche, stale
- 100g butter
- 100g light brown sugar
- ½ tsp nutmeg, finely grated
- 2 tbsp demerara sugar
- Preheat the oven to 160°C.
- Peel, core and slice the apples into inch-sized chunks.
- In a food processor or by hand, process the brioche into breadcrumbs.
- Melt the butter and stir it through the breadcrumbs, followed by the light brown sugar and nutmeg.
- Sprinkle a third of the breadcrumb mixture over the bottom of an oven-safe dish, about 9in in diameter. Layer half of the apple chunks on top of the crumbs, followed by another third of the crumb mixture, and the second half of the apple pieces. Sprinkle the final crumbs on top and scatter the demerara sugar evenly across them.
- Cover with tin foil, tenting so it doesn’t touch the top of the pudding. Bake for 40 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for a further ten minutes. Serve hot, ideally with hard sauce.
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