When I was last back visiting my family in the UK, we went out for a lovely Sunday roast. There was everything I could hope for: roast potatoes, gravy, Yorkshire puddings. So imagine my surprise when there wasn’t a crumble or pie on the pudding menu! (And, yes, I use the word ‘pudding’ here deliberately. I realise that ‘dessert’ menu is a classier term, but, if there’s one time that the word ‘pudding’ is called for, it’s after Sunday lunch)

This experience left me with a hole in my life that needed filling, and a crumble is certainly that: filling.

The Sunday puddings of my childhood were often gooseberry crumbles because of the gooseberry bushes that thrived at the bottom of our garden but we had trees growing ‘cooking’ apples too and apple crumble is my absolute favourite.

If you can get your hands on cooking apples, then you’re on to a winner – the sharp flavour is perfect and they tend to hold their shape well too. Sadly, I haven’t been able to track any down in Paris so I use an approximation to Cox’s Orange Pippins and I tend to go by appearance – I look for shiny red and green skin but they key thing is that you’re aiming for tart flavour to contrast with the sweet crumble.

I don’t want to add raisins or even cinnamon to the apple base, nor nuts to the topping – I’m a purist when it comes to this pudding. That said, I will allow a handful of oats in the crumble (although, as you’ll see from the photos, I didn’t this time).

I’ve written this out as a ‘recipe’ to give you a starting point but the really great thing about it is that the topping is just a matter of quantities. I start with how much butter I want to use/have in stock and use double the weight of butter in flour. Then, once you’ve rubbed in the butter to the flour, add half the weight of butter in sugar and stir it in. You can use most kinds of sugar and all sorts of fruit in whatever quantity you like, to suit the dish you have. Basically, you can’t go too far wrong and it’s always a crowd pleaser. It’s even been approved by my French friends!

I always credit my sources when it comes to recipes, and in this case, this one is entirely thanks to my mum. I’ll take this opportunity to thank her for all the wonderful Sunday lunches she has cooked for us over the years, and especially the Sunday puddings! I think she’ll recognise the Pyrex dish I always use!!

Classic comforting crumble with autumnal apples

Ingredients

• 600g apples
• Juice of a 1/4 of a lemon
• 100g plain flour
• 50g butter
• 25g sugar (caster sugar is standard here or you can try half muscovado or half demerera for different flavour and texture) plus extra to sweeten the apples, if you’ve got cooking apples

Method

Switch your oven on to 180°C.

Wash, core and chop up the apples. I leave the skin on and chop each apple into approximately 8 chunks but this is entirely down to personal preference.

Put the chopped apples into an ovenproof dish and squeeze over the lemon juice. If you’ve got cooking apples, you should probably sprinkle some sugar over too at this stage.

Next, weigh out your flour into a mixing bowl and add the butter. ‘Rub’ the butter in to the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Next, add the sugar and stir in. Tip the crumble evenly over the apples and put the dish in the oven for 40 minutes or so.

When the topping is golden brown, take the apple crumble out of the oven and leave to cool slightly before serving up and tucking in.