The French absolutely love no-fuss rustic desserts quickly prepared. Crumbles are among them, here with apples and crumble topping deliciously flavored with pieces of Speculoos biscuit.
Can you resist to crumble still hot right out of the oven? Do you like contrasts in temperatures, warm cake and chilled side ? With a scoop of vanilla ice cream or crème fraîche (or yoghurt like my daughters do)? Those are definitely lovely served with this apple crumble.
Where this recipe comes from
I imagined this recipe during confinement held all over France last Spring due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As most French I tried to see this period as a half full glass rather than a half empty glass as we like to say, and tried to go out only when absolutely necessary, and use as much as possible the ingredients I had in the freezer and in my panty. I tend to store lots of food for my future recipes. Anyway we were not prepared at all to this lock down and curiously some ingredients ran out in local stores or supermarkets. Among them, the two main missing were curiously toilet paper and flour.
Therefore I tried to reduce the amount of flour in my recipes andmade several times crumbles using oats (see my oatmeal crumble topping here, one of the recipes you seem to like on the blog if I refer to the statistics, and that we make very often at home with all kind of fruits). For a change, I made this with crushed speculoos biscuits. Perfect soooo flavorful, we love it and it peticularly goes well with apple or other Autumn fruits. Feel free to test this crumble topping recipe with all kind of different fruits.
A few information on the recipe
- Crushed speculoos: The grind does not necessarily have to be very fine, there can be more or less large chunks that will give a wonderful crunchy texture.
- To increase the flavor of speculoos, you can change the ratio of speculoos to flour (be careful, it will then be a bit sweet, therefore you may want to reduce the amount of sugar).
- For a gluten-free version, you can replace wheat flour with rice flour.
- For apples, you can add cinnamon with the sugar. If you have salted caramel, it’s even better than brown sugar!
- Fruits: Do not hesitate to vary fruits and add raisins or cranberries.
And for crisps lovers
For crumble lovers, you will find on the blog my oatmeal crumble topping which is very popular on the blog and a savory version, one of my daughters’ favorite dishes: the fish and vegetable crumble with coconut milk.
Apple Crisp with Speculoos Crumble Topping
Ingredients
Filling
- 6 apples
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
- 150 ml water
Crumble topping
- 100 gr butter
- 75 gr flour
- 75 gr Speculoos
- 100 gr sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180 °C.
Prepare the crumble topping
- Grind speculoos into rough powder (with mortar or blender), not too thin grind. Combine this with the sugar and flour.
- Cut cold butter into cubes. Add butter to flour – Speculoos – sugar mix. Combine with your fingertips to gradually get the crumble texture (you can use a food processor if you are used to it).
Prepare apples
- Peel, seed and cut the apples into cubes.
- Place them at the bottom of an oven proof dish, sprinkle brown sugar and pour in water. Combine to coat well with sugar and moisten apples.
Finish and bake
- Pour over the crumble topping. Cover the apples well but do not flatten, it’s fine if it is roughly spread..
- Bake for 30 minutes at 180 °C.