Craisin & Apple Crumble in a Paella pan?
When you have plenty of wood and a WFO, there are times when you want to avoid doing house or yard chores, and go straight to cooking (actually, straight to eating...but raw has its drawbacks). Towards the end of the day, I decided that if I fired up the oven, I could idle away at least a couple of hours and end up with some good eats (by the way, my favorite cooking show).
Nice thing about doing this the day after a bread bake, the oven was pretty hot already, so it didn’t take much wood or time to get up to 475°F (I probably didn’t need to build another fire, but again...when you have plenty of wood...)
Below is Susan's Rhubarb Crunch recipe that she made for an FFA cooking contest at Shell Lake High School in the mid to late 1960's. I like more of the crunchy topping than she did, so I bumped up the quantities a bit when I make it. The call for sugar certainly can vary with season’s rhubarb, as with most fruits, so you'll have to be the judge on the amount of sugar(s) you want to add. As always, add less sugar than called for and mix it into the prepared fruit to taste…don't add more sugar to the dry topping mix. What I like about this recipe is that even though it originally called for rhubarb, almost any fruit or combination works well.
Pre-heat oven to 375°F (It's a strong possibility that the dessert will boil over a bit during the bake, so place a foil-lined cookie sheet on the shelf below the main baking rack.)
Susan’s Rhubarb Crunch
2.0 C Prepared rhubarb, (rough chopped)
1.0 C Flour -dry
1.0 C Old fashioned oats -dry
3/4 C Sugar -dry
1/4 C Brown Sugar -dry
3/4 tsp Cinnamon -dry
3/4 tsp Nutmeg -dry
1/2 tsp Kosher salt -dry
1/2 C Butter, softened (+ extra for the baking dish)
Butter an 8 x 10 baking dish well on the inside (especially the corners).
Mix the dry ingredients together. Pour the prepared rhubarb (fruit) into the baking dish and level it out. Spread the mixed dry ingredients over the top of the fruit and dot it with softened butter.
Bake for 45 minutes, lowering the oven temp to 350°F after adding the prepared dessert. You should see liquid bubbling up the sides as it nears being done.
*** After a bread bake this winter, I got hungry for dessert. I always loved Susan’s rhubarb crisp, so I thought I’d throw something together based on her original recipe. I reasoned that how else do you know if you’re on a diet if you don’t experience indulgence? So, armed with that logic and no rhubarb, I started rummaging around the pantry. I came up with some Fuji & HoneyCrisp apples as well as a package of frozen cranberries. Sounded like I could use them in place of the rhubarb and since the oven was already hot.
I rough chopped the apples, gave ‘em a good squeeze of lemon juice and tossed them in the Paella pan. (“Why a Paella pan?” you ask, well simply because it was hanging in the pantry in plain view...and I’d probably have to dig for the “proper baking dish” called for in the recipe.)
I’d read apples take a bit longer to cook, so I also added the butter, brown sugar, cranberries, nutmeg, & cinnamon. I mixed it briefly and then put it in the oven to give it a little pre-cook. I put the oats & flour...oops...I didn’t have nearly enough rolled oats (I mean really, how could anybody not have a large carton of rolled oats somewhere in a cupboard?)
Since I’d already deviated quite a bit from the original recipe (and it’s not like any of the ingredients weren’t good by themselves), so with that thought process in my beady little brain, I decided to use my Quaker Simply Granola (AKA: Oats, Honey, Raisins, & Almonds) to make up for the lacking rolled oats (and slyly slipped the original recipe under the cutting board where I wouldn’t be reminded how far I’d strayed).
After the apples started to soften, I went back in the house and gathered up my rogue, unconventional topping from the kitchen counter and grabbed the butter dish...back out to the WFO.
While sprinkling the topping over the cooking apples, I was surrounded by a pretty sensuous cloud of dessert calorie vapors...heavenly (and to be sure, decadent). I slopped slabs of butter on top of the dry topping mix and put the whole shooting match back in the oven.
Without any concept of how long this bigger pan of dessert was going to take to cook, I bit the bullet and surrendered myself to the fact that I needed to stand there and salivate until the damn thing was done. (Oh, the sacrifices I make for my stomach!)
Well, it didn’t take that long...and it’s not like I needed food immediately or that my belt would need tightening in the near future. Upon reflection, those were 20 minutes very well spent. Certainly sped up the cooking time having an oven temp closer to 500°F than the original 350°F and pre-cooked apples. The only thing that would have made this better would have been ice cream.
Today is my day to celebrate Susan’s May 7th birthday. She would’ve been 70 this year and I’m positive, still able to kick my ass (in a loving way of course). I was advised by my friends to do many different things on this day of celebration, but my favorite suggestion was to make a dessert we both loved...surprise, here comes another variation of her rhubarb crunch. I did have rhubarb in the garden, so I used 3 cups of chopped rhubarb and 1 Fuji apple chopped. I had just picked up some blueberries, so I added about a half cup of them as well. As I mentioned, I like the crunch on top, so I chose to mix all the dry ingredients together with the butter, to then apply the whole kit & caboodle on top of the layer of chopped fruit (I’m sure she’d have kicked my ass over that move as well.)
I am firing the WFO tonight for a bread bake tomorrow, so I did this dessert in the electric oven. The butter dish was getting low, so I greased the pan (yes, I actually had dug out the correct glass baking dish for this) with vegetable Shortening. I simply spread out the chopped fruit & berries and then put the crumbly topping mix over it and put it in the preheated oven...well, I guess I did at least one thing according to the recipe.
I baked it for almost an hour at a lower temp (325°F)...so, as you’ll note from the previous paragraph, I was referring only to preheating the oven in regards to following the recipe.
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| Into the preheated oven (with drip pan beneath). |
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| It took an extra 15 minutes because I'd loaded it up... |
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| ...but it really turned out nicely...a fitting tribute to Susan (and just desserts!) |
At any rate, it tasted damn good with Umpqua Vanilla Bean ice cream and brought back many fine memories of our almost 50 years together...and almost 48 years as married folks! It truly was a great way to celebrate the love of my life’s birthday (and satisfy my sweet tooth).
Nuts! Do you eat this masterpiece with a spoon or a fork?
What would Emily Post say?
(Who really cares?)
Guess I’ll use both, since my dishwasher works pretty well and I’ve got plenty of dish washing soap (not to mention a dozen spoons and a dozen forks in the drawer).
Well, I guess it doesn't really matter after all...both utensils worked extremely effectively (as expected...I mean, that is sorta their purpose...) transferring goodness to my eager mouth. A note here for those who prefer food in their mouths, not on their shirt/blouse: I'd suggest eating ice cream first and quickly on a warm fruit crunch if you chose to use the fork...fork tines can be leaky, just sayin'.
By the way, in addition to my culinary celebration of Susan's birthday, I noticed that tonight is the Strawberry Moon (May 7, 2020) deemed by NASA as the last Supermoon of 2020. Apparently there is some debate on whether it qualifies as a true Supermoon, but I'll side with NASA since there is a big, beautiful, full moon shining down on my memories with Susan (and an empty dessert plate).
