Make Vegetarian Date and Apple Crumble From Scratch
Easy and Great Tasting Vegetarian Recipe.
This recipe for vegetarian date and apple crumble is easy to make and great tasting. Some things just go well together and in my opinion date and apples were made for each other.
The sweetness of the dates compliments the sharp taste of the apples, especially if you use a cooking apple such as Bramley or a suitable alternative in you live outside of the U.K.
If you are using an eating apple for this recipe, then cut down on the amount of sugar that you add to the fruit. Always taste a small piece of whatever apple you are using before adding the sugar, it is quite easy to make this dish too sweet. If I make this recipe using eating apples I often leave the skins on, just give the apples a good wash before using them, as they can be covered in wax, or worse, pesticides.
Cut the apples into smaller pieces and reduce the pre-cooking time, as eating apples will break down far quicker than cooking apples. You don't want to make the crumble using a fruit mush, you really do need to leave a bit of shape and texture in the fruit mixture.
If you don't like the taste of dates then you can substitute sultanas, currants or sour cherries. Using orange juice instead of water in this recipe gives the dish a really fruity, almost exotic taste when it combines with the dates. I have also made it using apple juice which works really well too. Of course, if you don't have any fruit juice in the house then plain tap water works just as well.
How to Make the Dish.
Cook Time
Ingredients
- 625g apples, cooking or eating apples.
- 100g dates, stones removed.
- 200g soft brown sugar
- Pinch cinnamon, add to filling and crumble mixture.
- Good squeze honey.
- Small glass orange juice.
- 350g flour, plain or self raising.
- 200g butter.
How to make the date and apple crumble.
- Preheat your oven to 180c
- Peel, core and slice the apples.
- Remove the stones from your dates by making a slit down the side and sliding out the stone.
- Place the apples into a saucepan with 150g of the sugar and the orange juice.
- Add the honey and half of the cinnamon.
- Stir well and place on the hob over a medium heat.
- To make the crumble mixture place the flour, most of the sugar and the butter into a bowl.
- Rub together until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
- Add the remaining cinnamon to the crumble mixture.
- When the apple and date mixture has softened a bit, this should take around ten minutes, place it into an ovenproof dish.
- Sprinkle the crumble mixture on the top and add the left over soft brown sugar to the top of the crumble. This gives a nice crunchy topping.
- Place the apple and date crumble in the preheated oven and cook for aroung forty minutes, or until the mixture is bubbling around the sides and the topping has changed colour to a golden brown. If you cook the crumble for longer the sugar on the top will caramalise, it depends on how you like your crumble. We like it to be a little bit soft so I tend to only leave it in the oven for around thirty minutes.
- Remove the crumble from the oven and allow it to cool for at least ten minutes before eating, as the apple and date mixture will be very hot. Serve with ice cream, cream, or custard.
Enjoy Your Date and Apple Crumble.
Make This Dessert Vegan Friendly.
This is a wonderful vegetarian dessert that just about everyone will love, it is real comfort food. You can make this recipe vegan-friendly by using vegan spread instead of the butter and leaving out the honey. There are some very good vegan ice creams on the market that would go really well with this dish, or make a custard using soya milk.
Alternative recipe.
This recipe can also be made using pears instead of the apples, peel and core the pears and slice them lengthwise. If I make this crumble using pears then I don't bother to pre-cook them at all, as they cook very quickly if you are using ripe fruit. Use water, not orange juice, with the pears and a little less sugar. Of course, you can make crumble using any fruit, rhubarb, cherries, plums - or a combination of different fruit, everything works and tastes great, so let your imagination run wild!
I hope that you enjoy this vegetarian date and apple crumble recipe as much as my family does.
© 2012 Galaxy Harvey
