Apple and Blackberry Crumble With a Seeded Oat Topping

A crumble that does rather more than a crumble usually does. This one keeps the fibre in, pulls the sugar right back and gets 22 different plants into a single dish. And it still tastes like a proper pudding!

Crumble is the first thing most of us reach for when the apples come in. It's also, in its usual form, mostly white flour, butter and sugar with some fruit hiding underneath.

This version changes the ratio rather than the idea. The topping does the work: oats and wholemeal flour instead of white, walnuts for crunch, and three tablespoons of seed blend stirred through. The filling leans on the fruit and the spices for sweetness, so there's about 6g of added sugar per serving rather than the 25g or so you'd find in a standard recipe.

It still browns, it still goes crisp, and it still wants custard.

Serves 6

Prep 20 minutes. Bake 35 minutes.

Ingredients

For the filling

• 500g Bramley apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
• 300g eating apples (Cox or Braeburn), skin on, cored and chopped
• 200g blackberries, fresh or frozen
• 1 tbsp maple syrup or honey
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• Half tsp ground ginger
• Juice and zest of half a lemon
• 1 tbsp water

For the topping

• 100g rolled oats
• 75g wholemeal flour
• 50g cold butter, cubed
• 3 tbsp SUCSEED Gut Health (about 45g)
• 30g walnuts, roughly chopped
• 1 tbsp demerara sugar
• Half tsp ground cinnamon
• Pinch of salt

Method

Heat the oven. 190C, 170C fan, gas mark 5.

Make the filling. Put both types of apple in a saucepan with the maple syrup, cinnamon, ginger, lemon juice and zest, and the water. Cook over a medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes, until the Bramleys have collapsed and the eating apples still hold their shape. Take it off the heat and fold the blackberries through. Tip into a baking dish of about 1.5 litres.

Rub the topping. Put the wholemeal flour, oats and salt in a bowl and rub the cold butter in with your fingertips until it looks like rough breadcrumbs. Don't overwork it, the lumps are what go crisp.

Add the seeds last. Stir in the SUCSEED Gut Health, walnuts, demerara and cinnamon. Adding the blend after the butter keeps the seeds loose and crunchy rather than bound into the mixture.

Bake. Scatter the topping over the fruit without pressing it down, and bake for 35 minutes, until the top is golden and the fruit is bubbling at the edges.

Rest. Give it 10 minutes before serving. It's molten straight from the oven and it thickens as it settles.

Why It Works

Oats bring beta-glucan, a soluble fibre that dissolves into a gel as it moves through the gut. It's a different fibre from the one in the apples, which matters more than the total amount.

The apples bring pectin, another soluble fibre, and leaving the skins on the eating apples keeps the insoluble fibre in too. Two varieties rather than one is a free extra plant point, and they behave differently in the pan: Bramleys collapse into sauce, eating apples hold their shape.

Blackberries are one of the better sources of anthocyanins, the polyphenols behind their colour. They're in season now and they freeze well, so frozen ones work just as happily out of season.

Wholemeal flour instead of white keeps the bran and germ in the topping rather than stripping them out.

Walnuts add texture and unsaturated fats, and they're a plant most of us eat rarely.

Cinnamon and ginger do a lot of the sweetening work here. Spices are among the most polyphenol dense foods by weight, which is why they're worth using generously rather than by the pinch.

SUCSEED Gut Health is a blend of 13 different plants: seven seeds, a flaked wholegrain and five botanicals. Three tablespoons stirred into the topping takes this dish from 9 plants to 22, which is most of the way to the 30 plants a week challenge from one pudding.

Between the oats, the fruit, the wholemeal flour and the seeds, a portion carries a useful amount of fibre, which most of us are short on. UK adults are advised to aim for 30g a day and the average is closer to 18g, so our six easy ways to get more fibre into your diet are worth a look.

Swaps and Notes

• Gluten free: swap the wholemeal flour for ground almonds and use certified gluten free oats.
• Dairy free: cold coconut oil rubs in much like butter.
• No blackberries: plums, pears or frozen berries all work. A different fruit is a different plant point, so rotating is worth doing.
• Making ahead: the topping keeps in the freezer in a bag for a month and goes straight onto the fruit from frozen. Add 5 minutes to the bake.
• Leftovers: cold crumble over yoghurt the next morning is genuinely good, and the oats and seeds make it a reasonable breakfast rather than a pudding in disguise.

More seasonal ideas are in our recipe collection.