Apple Crumble has always been a favourite; easy to make, and even easier to eat. So to step up the gears a little bit I went with a never-before-made recipe from "The Queen of Puddings", Mary Berry. The first difference I found was that Mary suggested an alternative way of sweetening the bitter cooking apples: Apricot Jam. Just so happens that apricot jam is my favourite jam and so the idea sounded appealing: remove half (or as much as you like) of the sugar for the apples and replace it with apricot jam.
Anyway, the apricot jam was a very nice addition indeed, and so the next thing to do was to add lemon zest to the apples. Now, presumably that was to stop them going brown (which they already had done because it took ages to peel their bulky selves), but I have never put lemon zest in apple crumble before - probably not even lemon juice to stop the browning. Yet, if Mary Berry, Queen of Puddings, says to put lemon zest into your puddings, then you damn well put lemon zest in your puddings.
It did rather smell of lemon when it came out the oven. And it did rather taste of lemon when eaten; and by "rather" I mean shudderingly, achingly so. This was probably because: A] Half of the sugar had been removed and replaced with apricot jam which failed to combat the sourness of the lemon. B] The crumble sat in the fridge for a few hours before cooking, because I'm not well enough to make it and eat it all within the same space of time. C] So as not to waste the lemon, as much zest as possible was scraped from all over the grater and cast boldly (naively) into the apples. D] I'm not a worthy enough mortal to contend with the upper wizardry of The Queen of Puddings.
May her reign be long but, if I may add, subsequently lemon-less.
It did rather smell of lemon when it came out the oven. And it did rather taste of lemon when eaten; and by "rather" I mean shudderingly, achingly so. This was probably because: A] Half of the sugar had been removed and replaced with apricot jam which failed to combat the sourness of the lemon. B] The crumble sat in the fridge for a few hours before cooking, because I'm not well enough to make it and eat it all within the same space of time. C] So as not to waste the lemon, as much zest as possible was scraped from all over the grater and cast boldly (naively) into the apples. D] I'm not a worthy enough mortal to contend with the upper wizardry of The Queen of Puddings.
May her reign be long but, if I may add, subsequently lemon-less.