Recipe Weekend: Momma's Apple Crumble

With the holidays approaching I felt it was time liven the place up with some holiday cheer. What better way to make the house smell like Christmas than caramelizing apples and cinnamon?

First, lay out the ingredients:

Brown sugar

Apples

Cinnamon

Oats

Flour

Butter

And a glass of wine because you can. 

I used Gala apples because they are my favourite, but you can use whichever type of apple you like best. Macintosh apples provide a nice contrast to the sugar because they are tart, and Delicious apples fill the bowl up faster because they are big. Whichever type of apple you use, you'll need to peel the ones you use. 

Then, pick the music. I opted for a nice selection of Christmas music. I say nice, because I refuse to listen to the same old run-of-the-mill Christmas tunes that air on the radio every December. I like music with substance, that takes risks. Mercyme, Michael W. Smith, Sting, etc. These are some of my favourites. 

The recipe is simple enough. Fill a casserole dish with apples about 3/4 way full. Sprinkle heavily with brown sugar and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, mix 1/2 cup melted butter, 2 cups oats, 1/2 cup flour, and brown sugar. Put the dry mixture on top of the apples and bake at 350 degrees for 30-45 mins. 

When it comes out, it should be nice and sweet and apple crumbly. 

And it will - as long as you remember to add the flour.

Confession: The first time I made the apple crumble, I forgot the flour. Apparently, when you forget the flour, the oats don't get crumbly, they get soggy and stay oatsy. When this happened, I did what every self resepecting twenty-something year old woman would do - I called my mom. She laughed, as the good mom she is, and then told me that I needed to add flour. Clearly worried that I wouldn't be able to salvage any part of this apple crumble for a good blog post, I quickly set out to fixing the crumble part of the apple crumble. I felt like Dave Ramsey, rooting through cupboards, pulling out my Quaker Oats, my measuring cups, and my assortment of curse words. I scraped mushy oats off of the apples, reapplied the brown sugar, and tried my hardest to fix up my failure of a baking experiment. I didn't fix it, and instead made an entirely new apple crumble. The skrew-up apple crumble was still tasty, it just wasn't what I was expecting. The second time, I added the flour and it got nice and crispy. 

This time, I dished out the good apple crumble into bowls, and topped it with vanilla yogurt. I chose Source yogurt because it is my favourite, but you can do whatever type you like best. You can even do ice cream on the side if you feel really adventurous (which I didn't...nor did I actually have any in the freezer, which surprised me, since I usually have a exceedingly large tub of it). 

One thing I would like to note is the casserole dish that I used. It was passed down to me from my grandmother before I started university. It used to have a twin, with the colours inverted. It broke during my second year after an unfortunate tumble off the counter. This one, however, has survived. It is probably my favourite casserole dish, and I plan on keeping it long enough to pass on to a younger generation. 

Sentimental, I know.