grandmas wild blackberry yorkshire crumble
I’ve been toying with the idea of sharing Grandmas recipes because well, she can’t half bake! Her recipes are steeped in tradition, the old ways and well I just love all that. She speaks in pounds and ounce and it’s like beautiful music to my metric gram reinforced millennial head. Luckily for me google has a handy conversion tool. The beauty of my Grandma is that she saves recipes, cookbooks, scraps of paper and wonderful nuggets of bakery information. She’s a head of bakery filled wisdom and I believe it terribly selfish to keep this hidden deep within our rather large family. Her baking is at the forefront of all mine and my cousins memories and although we’re partial to delve into the wonders of Costco bakery, Grandma is still our number one essential party throwing tool.
This particular recipe is currently being typed up because me and Otis came across some wild blackberries but simply couldn’t be bothered to use them for anything overly elaborate. I wanted to pick them, bake them, eat them and then sit back down on my lazy backside to watch Gogglebox. I was completely content in the knowledge that we ate seasonally, literally from bush to belly in 2 hours and I didn’t need to hit the supermarket for a long list of complicated ingredients.
Believe it or not Grandma can text, she can even send picture messages! This is amazing, all i had to do was whatsapp her, “Hi Grandma, I need a recipe that’s quick and easy and involves wild blackberries” I got the following reply…
GRANDMAS WILD BLACKBERRY YORKSHIRE CRUMBLE
Ingredients
350g of handpicked blackberries
2 or 3 tablespoons of caster sugar. (Depending on how sweet you like it.)
75g (3oz) self raising flour
25g (1oz) porridge oats
50g (2oz) caster sugar
50g (2oz) margarine
Method
For the fruit filling
Soak the blackberries in cold water and salt – the salt helps draw out anything you wouldn’t want to be eating. Drain and rinse.
Add a little water to the blackberries in a pan, add 2 tablespoons of sugar and place on heat – DO NOT LET IT TURN TO MUSH.
Place the fruit in an ovenproof dish, remember not to include much of the juice.
(I sprinkled a little cinnamon over my fruit once it was in the dish, Grandma has never advised this so take it or leave it.)
For the crumble topping
Combine margarine, flour & oats until they resemble breadcrumbs, mix in sugar and place the mixture over the fruit filling and firm down.
Bake until golden… Gas Mark 5, 190 degrees or the baking oven in the Aga for 30 mins.
Nick was so desperate to eat this he wouldn’t let me get a decent photo. “You’re always taking bloody photos, move! I’m hungry.” So, there you go, an easy ‘anybody can do it’ cupboard staple crumble. Enjoy!
Edit: Grandma has text me to say she’s found some old recipes from her grandma. This is too exciting