I have become slightly obsessed with this apple crumble. It appeared in Good Food magazine in October (I cannot find a link to it on line) and my photograph doesn’t do it justice. But it’s one of those puddings that, once served up, I itch to eat and cannot be bothered to really photograph.

I have made this a lot recently and my partner says it tastes really Christmassy. I agree, but it only really started tasting Christmassy as we got into late November…

The ingredients for the underneath bit:

100g raisins

100g pitted soft dates, chopped up

85g light muscovado sugar

3 tablespoons of dark rum (I have also used sherry or marsala)

25g unsalted butter

1 teaspoon of mixed spice

Zest and juice of one lemon

4 Bramley apples, about 800g in total, peeled and cored and cut into wedges or rings

The ingredients for the crumble topping:

125g plain flour (I mix a bit of wholemeal flour in there too)

100g unsalted butter

50g light muscovado sugar

3 tablespoons of jumbo oats

25g flaked almonds

What you do:

Heat the oven to 190C.

Put everything for the underneath bit, save for the apples and lemon juice, into a pan and cook on the hob until the butter has melted and the sugar is syrupy and it looks nice. Then toss into the pan (once off the heat) the apples with the lemon juice, mix around until all coated and put in a suitable oven proof dish. I use a Le Creuset thing that is approx 20cm square.

To make the topping I put the flour and butter into a food processor and go past the fine breadcrumb stage and pulse until big clumps form. Then I stir in the sugar, oats and almonds. Spread this on top of the fruit mixture. At first it will look like you don’t have enough mixture but don’t panic as it all works out. Cover with foil and then * put it into the oven for one hour in total, but for the first thirty minutes keep the foil on, then whip it off to let the crumble brown, for the last thirty.

Leave to stand for about 10mins before serving with custard or cream or ice cream or all three. Oink, oink.

It’s delicious and wonderfully comforting and warming. I hardly make crumble any other way now, although I might find it all a bit much come the spring time.

*note: you can easily make this a few hours ahead, assemble, cover with foil and then put it in the oven as you sit down to main course.

Apologies again for the not great pic…