A Fruity Death by Butter
The cold air of autumn has me yearning for comforting food that I love so much, casseroles, stews and puddings. Now, I normally don’t cook a pudding during the week as there really isn’t the time, between cooking dinner, organising the kids’ clothes for the next day, housework, homework…you get the picture. But, yesterday I was in my local supermarket and they had a special offer of two punnets of plums for €3. I’m a sucker for plums!
On the menu last night was a beef pie with puff pastry lid and a plum crumble. As you know, I recently bought the Gastropub Cookbook – Another Helping by Diana Henry and in it was a lovely recipe for a plum crumble with real custard. Now, I’d just made the beef pie and had just enough energy to make the crumble so the custard remains a challenge for another day! The recipe calls for 2kg plums, LOTS of sugar, a BRICK of butter and sweet white wine {which I didn’t have so I used water instead}.
By a brick of butter, I really mean a BRICK OF BUTTER so this is no ordinary crumble! The plums are softened with sugar and 250 grams of butter with the same amount of butter in the crumble topping. From making crumbles before, the topping is usually 2:1 flour to butter. Not this recipe as it’s 1:1 flour and oats to butter! I have to say I found the topping very hard to make as there just wasn’t enough dry mix to create a crumb. Nevertheless, I determined to continue for the sake of testing the recipe 😉
The crumble was layered in a deep glass dish and baked until golden brown. Despite all the sugar, the taste wasn’t overly sweet but the dish was very, very heavy. You wouldn’t need to serve much at all. I served it with vanilla ice-cream but the custard would have been excellent.
Epilogue: As happens when I do a lot of cooking, I didn’t get to wash everything last night {well, a dishwasher only holds so much!}. As I didn’t use all the juices from the plums the leftovers were there to see this morning. What did I find in the pot? Solid butter! Its no wonder my arteries are talking to me… Statins anyone??
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