Jamie Oliver’s Apple Crisp

I got a bit side-tracked from starting on my Jogjakarta posts because I started doing stuff in the kitchen today. Been sick for the past couple of days but I’m also tired of just staying in bed.

Let me rewind a bit and give you the back story to why I wanted to do this recipe… I visited my cousin M and his new wife J in Manila and got treated with her home cooked meals and desserts. She is an AMAZING cook. She attributes it to having 1 year of cooking classes & another year of baking in high school and this wonderful recipe book called Mad Hungry, where she got her recipes for the yummy banana bread, apple crisps, banana pancakes, etc.  I’ve yet to get myself a copy, but I MUST HAVE THIS BOOK!

She inspired me to do apples crisps, but I had to make do with Jamie Oliver’s Apple Crisp recipe which I found online. It’s very simple.

FILLING

• 400 g cooking apples
• 50 g caster sugar
• CRUMBLE
• 35 g wholemeal flour
• 35 g rolled oats
• 35 g unsalted butter
• 20 g caster sugar

CRUMBLE

• 35 g wholemeal flour
• 35 g rolled oats
• 35 g unsalted butter
• 20 g caster sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/gas 5.
2. Peel and core the apples, then quarter and cut in to chunks.
3. Put the apples into a pan with the sugar and 1 tablespoon of water, then cook over a low heat for 5 minutes to soften slightly, stirring occasionally, then tip into a small ovenproof baking dish.
4. Place the flour and oats in a bowl and mix well. Chop the butter into small cubes and add this to the oats and flour. Mix and rub in with your fingertips until it resembles an even crumb texture.
5. Add the sugar and mix through, then cover the fruit with the crumble mixture.
6. Bake for around 20 minutes, or until golden and cooked through.

My mistake was to translate the Grams into cups (for some reason I didn’t trust my weighing scale), which led me to put in too much flour. I only realized how idiotic it was to translate it into grams when I had mixed the oats and the flour already. Uh-oh, too late!  (palm to forehead) Of course there had to be more oats than flour because oats are lighter! Hello to self?!? But there I was putting 1/3 cup of rolled outs, 1/3 cup of flour (and even packing it in!) and almost 1/3 cup of margarine. No wonder it was kinda hard to mix.

The results are okay. The crisps are just a bit thicker than ideal because of the flour. So next time I will lessen the amount of flour to 1/6 cup. But taste-wise it’s pretty good!!!  Definitely something on my to-be-repeated list! And the hubby loves it! He had TWO servings to prove it. Yes we have a hit! =)

The finished product is nice and golden! It says 20 mins average baking time but I extended it because I wasn’t satisfied with the color yet. I set my timer to 5 mins and kept on resetting until it looked like this.

Enjoy!