Recipe - Strawberry and Rhubarb Crumble

Hi there! I thought I'd try sharing some recipes once in a while as I love cooking and baking, and it's kind of fun making it look pretty for photos while I'm making it! I always get my fresh produce through an organic grocer who delivers to my front door, and this week, I had some rhubarb in my box. I haven't eaten rhubarb as an adult, but I remember my grandma making various rhubarb jams and other yummy sweets from her homegrown supply! I'll warn you in advance, I'm one of those annoying cooks who just throws a 'bit of this' in and whips up 'a bit of that'. I don't really measure things, so I'll make an effort to be clear with my measurements for you, but they might not match what I made exactly!

As they say in professional recipes, pre-heat your oven to 170º C (approx 350º F). Who wants to wait for the oven to heat up when you're ready to cook that tastiness?

3 cups of fresh strawberries, quartered or eighthed, it really depends how big they are to start ;)
1.5 cups fresh rhubarb, cut into 2cm (1 inch) slices
The juice of one lemon, keep the rind for the topping. You can buy one at the market, or pinch it off your neighbor's tree like I did. (Branches hang over the fence, so technically they are mine, right?)
1/4 cup caster (fine) sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar (loosely packed, you don't want your teeth to fall out)
3 tablespoons of flour. This is to offest the goo-iness of the cooked strawberries. I used White Wings gluten free flour because it is great. I also used self-raising because I had no plain gluten-free flour. Plain is probably best, but such a small amount of self-raising doesn't really hurt. You could probably use less flour or skip it altogether.

I REALLY made this part up as I went along. I even made a little more at the end so it covered my filling better. You may need more or less, depending on the size of your baking dish.

approx 100g unsalted butter
1/2 - 1 cup plain flour
1/4 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or vanilla essence)
Finely grated rind of one lemon (you didn't throw it away did you?)
approx 3 tablespoons of sugar (I used brown sugar again because I like it the best)

For the filling, you just need to dump all of your ingredients into your baking pan and mix them up! So, so easy!

The topping is almost as easy. Chop the butter into small cubes, and add the rest of the ingredients. You need to rub the butter in between your fingers to blend it with the flour (and flavors) until it resembles biscuit (cookie!) crumbs. Once that is done, sprinkle it evenly over the fruit mixture and pop it in the oven! (this is a work in progress below, you should cover the fruit completely)

When I was at school, I studied food technology and became an expert at cooking the most complicated thing possible in 70 minutes, which included all prep, cooking, cleaning and eating. I'm a big clean-as-I-go cooker, I HATE cleaning up a huge kitchen mess. So usually, you'll find my kitchen spotless as I'm pulling my baking out of the oven. After you put the crumble in the oven, finish cleaning. You'll feel better afterwards, I promise! It needs to cook for around 40 minutes. You can tell it's ready when the fruit mixture is nice and bubbly and the crumble has a nice golden brown hue :)

I'm SORRY! I know that is the most terrible pun you've heard all day, maybe even all week. I just couldn't help myself! This recipe is super easy to make, and trust me when I say, it is DEE-licious. I had mine with a little bit of vanilla bean ice cream mmm. mmm.

I hope you enjoyed my first recipe! Leave me any comments or advice, I always love to hear what you're thinking!

Kitty
xo