Nigella’s Jumbleberry Crumble is a great winter desserts. It’s easy to make, and very versatile – we’ve made it with everything from apples to rhubarb to berries.
Lorraine, who is Not Quite Nigella, recently wrote about bargain-priced frozen blackberries for sale in nearby Marrickville, and I couldn’t resist picking up a couple of bags ($4.50/kg!!). Our dessert was made with frozen blackberries, raspberries and blueberries.
This recipe makes more crumble topping than you actually need for this amount of fruit, so stash the extra in a ziplock bag in the freezer.
- 200g plain (AP) flour
- 100g unsalted butter, cold
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 120g demerara sugar
- 600g mixed fresh or frozen berries, or other chopped fruit
- 2 teaspoons cornflour
- 4 heaped teaspoons vanilla sugar
1. Preheat oven to 180C with fan.
2. Place the flour, baking powder and demerara sugar in a medium sized bowl and stir to combine. Cut the butter into small pieces, then rub it into the dry ingredients until crumbly (of course!).
3. Pour the frozen berries into the serving dish, and toss them with the cornflour and vanilla sugar. Top with about two-thirds of the crumble mix (although you really could use as little or as much as you like), then bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until the berries are just starting to ooze juice and the topping is brown and crunchy. You might need to turn the oven temperature up in the final 5 – 10 minutes to brown the top – resist the urge to do this too soon, or the topping will burn before the fruit is hot.
Serve with cream, icecream, or simply on its own (which is how I prefer it!).
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
It looks so yummy. The recipe seems easy and delicous! Can’t wait to try it.
So disappointing that none of the family likes crumble – how can you not? I make it annually and then eat it all myself.
Actually, the French are mad for ‘le crumble’ – savoury versions too.
Ooooh, yum, I love crumble. And despite the fact that we’re opposite seaons to you here, it’s still crumble weather (grey, overcast and chilly – where is summer???)
It’s like time travel into the future visiting your blog :) Here the blackberries are just a thought as the flowers on the brambles are fading away now in readiness for August and fruit. That looks delicious though, just pop some over here would you?
Wanted to tell you that I put half a pot of double cream in with the milk in the latest batch of yoghurt, theorising that the yoghurt culture would work some magic on the cream, thereby allowing the lactosely challenged one to have his cream and eat it – it made the lushest yoghurt ever! It would be good on your crumble I reckon :)
I love the name of it, ‘Jumbleberry’. Crumbles are great, and so versatile. In recent years my crumbles have morphed into more of a cobbler though. So easy and quick, when you want dessert now!
Is that a baby romertopf I see there before me?! hmmm?
I love the name ‘jumbleberry’ too!
That looks fantastic Celia! And thanks for the shoutout! I really need to go back and replenish my berry supply! :D
delicious! look at all that sauce on the bottom, it’s like two desserts in one!
Thank you all! It’s really the nicest dessert – I’m going to make a big batch of crumble mix and stick it in the freezer now.
Tes, it really is sooo simple! And as Dana says, it’s like two desserts in one – crumble and self-saucing pudding. My boys particularly like it with icecream.
Anna, I guess you’d call a savoury crumble a gratin? I took some up to P & E when we made this batch – used up the leftover crumble topping to make a second, smaller dish.
Jo, fresh blackberries are just stupidly priced here – sometimes $9 – $10/150g punnet IF you can find them. Which makes the frozen ones just so much of a bargain! Thanks for the headsup on the yoghurt too! And hopefully you and C and all the other UKers will get some proper summer weather soon!
Brydie, it’s Nigella’s name, but it is such a clever one. Apparently “jumbleberry jam” was a term used to describe a preserve made from all the bits and bobs left in the allotment at the end of the season.
SG, not a baby Rom, but rather the Spanish terracotta dish I picked up at Chefs a while back (the one both of us kept eyeing off – it’s the perfect size for crumble for four!)
Lorraine, my dear, you are a star. You keep finding stuff for us – can’t tell you how pleased I am that you write about Sydney and not some other city. :) I had lunch with the Spice Girl today, and we’re already planning our next trek to Marrickville – will take your tour guide with us! :)
Waw,…Celia!!
What a fab looking oven dessert!! I so love to eat this served with hot devon custard,…oooh,…yes!!!!
Oh sounds like a great use for some rhubarb … might use ice cream with it given the heat here. Maybe next week I’ll be using custard given the weather. Changable :-)
I love the name as well. Are blackberries also called brambleberries? Or is that another fruit altogether?
I remember this recipe! I adore berries, I should pay a visit to that store too sometime!
In Canada, we called mixed berry desserts “bumbleberry,” often used to make pies. And I have had people think it was some weird and wonderful kind of single fruit, until they saw the inside of a pie. Right now, however, strawberry-rhubarb is the pie de Jour since both are in season. Well, rhubarb is … most of the strawberries are still coming from California. With the strong Canadian dollar, they are quite inexpensive … as little as $1.50 a pound. Not as good as the local ones will be, of course.
Sophie, custard would be wonderful with this!
Gill, if you’re just using rhubarb, I think you’d need more sugar. The blueberries were really sweet in ours.
Heidi, according to wiki, blackberries are a kind of brambleberry, which is the more generic term. I always mix them up though – to me blackberries and boysenberries look and taste quite similar. The frozen blackberries we bought came from Brazil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramble_berry
Maria, thanks for stopping by – what a fabulous blog you have! Definitely worth a visit to Chef Express!
Susan, “bumbleberry” sounds wonderful too – makes me think of honey as well. :) Local strawberries here can be quite cheap in season – sometimes we get a tray of 15 x 150g punnets for $5. But they’re about the only locally grown berry that ever goes cheap – the rest are always so prohibitively expensive. This year we’re going to try and grow our own – wish us luck! :)
Local (Vancouver Island) strawberries will be quite pricey … but farmers have to make a living. Blueberries are grown commercially in the Vancouver area, on mainland B.C., and, in a good year, can be a good buy. Raspberries and cranberries are also big crops, with a lot going to the juice market and for frozen berries. U-pick farms are popular for berries, too, especially for smaller operations, given that it’s hard to find agricultural workers. Organic fruit and veg is growing in demand and people are willing to pay the added cost. Becoming certified organic is expensive and time-consuming for farmers, so many farm organically without being certified and call their produce is organically grown or grown naturally. Eating “locally” is also a big deal with restaurants bragging of all the local product they use and people going on “100-mile diets” … eating only stuff coming from 100 miles or less away.
Our problem is climate – there aren’t many places in Sydney really cold enough to grow berries en masse. Fresh raspberries and blueberries are often freighted in from interstate, and the prices reflect their delicacy and subsequent shipping problems. The organic/locavore movement here is gaining momentum here too, although our focus is mainly just to process as much of our food at home as possible. It takes a lot of commitment to eat purely organically, and more money than we have. We do try and eat only free range meat, although that’s mostly driven by concern for the welfare of the animal.
Looks tasty, although the concept of fall boggles my mind right now – we’ve had temperatures in the 90s for a few weeks now (Tulsa, OK)…
Off topic question – I was just talking to my husband about this – do kids go to school in the summer in Australia, and then have “summer break” in the winter? That would be a total bummer.
Sasha, not at all. :) They have a very civilized long break over December/January, and the school term runs on the calendar year. I always wonder how northern hemispherers cope with the out of sync school year starting in September! We have scorching hot Christmases – sometimes it will be 40C on Christmas Day! :)
Hi Celia – no- it was a crumble not a gratin. lMaybe a gratin is defined by just cheese and/or breadcrumbs? Have a look at this site.
http://delicesdhelene.over-blog.com/pages/CRUMBLES_SALES-293343.html
I’ve had kumura crumble – no sugar in the topping but added pecans but I can’t remember what it was served with!
I went out and bought Blackberries too! But I think I missed a section of the shop. I only went to the front section where the frozen fruit is. Is there are more to Chef’s on Buckleys?
Anna, thanks, fascinating stuff!
Peta, no that’s basically it. Frozen fruit, lots of frozen prepared meals, and the unit on the right with the paperbark and interesting corn chips. All I picked up were the frozen berries and some mango cheeks. What are you going to do with your berries? :)