Apple crumble with orange creamed goats cheese & honeycomb nut brittle
Get the taste of seasonal fruit with this moreish reduced lactose and sugar crumble recipe. I would consider this to be a recipe of medium difficulty on a technical level. The areas you should focus on getting right are as follows:– Aim to create a multi-textured crumble using the steps outlined.– Don't break up into a fine powder.– Ensure you cook the moisture out of your apples or else the crumble will overflow in the oven and nobody wants that. – Finally, take care when whipping up your goats cheese, you really need to be gentle with the folding of the ingredients. However, if you follow the steps it isn't a daunting recipe and the reward is a warm, aromatic helping of nostalgia. It's also slightly lighter than its traditional counterpart, both on taste and the waist.
Equipment
- Chopping board
- Sharp knife
- small sauce pot
- small mixing bowl
- 4 small ramekins
Ingredients
- 6 apples
- 1 orange
- 100 g cake flour
- 150 g brown sugar
- 70 g coconut butter
- 30 g Sols west side honey
- 1 Belnori cabrito goats cheese
- 1 Ma Mère macadamia nut honeycomb
- cinnamon stick
- nutmeg
Instructions
- Wash all the fruit and prepare your chopping board.
- I chose to leave the skin on the apple because it was firm and crisp, it also allows the fruit to hold its shape a bit better when cooking. Chop the apple into small cubes.
- Zest the rind of the orange and then extract the juice, keep these separate to one side.
- Place the saucepot on the stove on a medium heat and add 100g of brown sugar, you may add just a dash of the orange juice to help it on its way to caramelise. Allow the sugar to melt down, taking care to ensure that it does not start to burn.
- Add the apples to the hot caramelising sugar with a stick of cinnamon. The heat should extract the moisture from the apples, thinning the sugar and creating a loose syrup. Once this has happened, turn the heat down and allow it to reduce until it's covered in a sticky sauce.
- Place the flour, remaining sugar and coconut butter in a mixing bowl and combine the ingredients, grate a little nutmeg to incorporate in the aromatic flavour. It should just be holding together. What I like to do at this stage is squeeze little balls with my hand to make them compacted. Let those cool slightly in the fridge.
- Spoon the cooked apple into your ramekins, take the crumble dough and gently break (crumble) the compressed balls over the surface of the apples. What you're looking for here is varying sizes of little crumbly balls coating the entirety of the apples.
- Wipe clean any smears on your ramekins as these will show up after baking, place them into the oven and bake until golden – for around 15 minutes.
- Whilst your crumble is baking place the goats cheese in the mixing bowl along with the honey and a tablespoon of orange juice. Cream it gently with a spoon until it is incorporated but still fluffy and smooth. Do not overwork the cheese
- Remove the crumbles from the oven once golden, quenelle the creamed goats cheese onto each of the crumbles, break the honeycomb over as a crunchy garnish and top of with a very gentle sprinkling of lemon zest.