I once had a few bananas that were overripe and decided to do something with them, instead of throwing them out or forcing myself to eat them. I started looking for an easy recipe that could be whipped up in no time. Those are my favourite: no super exotic ingredients, limited prep time, very few steps. I found exactly what I was looking for: the banana crumble.
After making a few batches of those, I decided to switch the bananas for apples. I tweaked a few things and all of a sudden, I had a great dessert recipe that could be executed while dinner was cooking, and everybody loves it!
Ingredients for about 10 portions (divide everything in two if you want to make 5 portions):
- 13-14 medium-sized apples (your favourite kind or whatever’s on sale!)
- ½ cup flour (I use organic whole wheat pastry flour, but white flour is fine)
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 2 cups rolled oats
- at least 4-6 Tbsp cinnamon
- 10-12 tablespoons butter (ideally softened)
- Chocolate chips (optional)
Use a 3-litre (12 cups) glass baking dish.
Preheat the oven at 190 degrees Celsius (about 375 F).
Spread some butter across the surface of the baking dish so that nothing sticks to it.
Use an apple corer to remove the cores of the apples. Of course, this can be done manually with a knife but a corer will save you a lot of time.
Instead of coring and slicing all 14 apples at once, core and slice 8-10 apples to begin with, mix them with cinnamon as indicated below, and see how they fit in your baking dish. The goal is to fill the baking dish with apple slices all the way up to the rim.
Use a food processor to slice all the apples and put them in a very large bowl. Again, this can be done manually but a food processor will make a huge difference in the preparation time. Mix the slices with cinnamon so that it is evenly distributed among the slices. I use a lot of cinnamon (probably 2-3 tablespoons). I don’t think you could overdo it with cinnamon.
Put the flour, brown sugar, rolled oats, butter, cinnamon (again, 2-3 tablespoons), and chocolate chips in the same large mixing bowl and mix everything by hand. The goal is to break down all the clumps and have a buttery mixture that doesn’t stick to your fingers when you’re done.
Pour the content of the mixing bowl evenly over the apples.
Put the baking dish in the preheated oven for 60 minutes. If you’re making 5 portions, I’d take the baking dish out of the oven after about 45 minutes.
Let me know how it went, or if you have any questions. I hope you enjoy it!