Apple & Strawberry Crumble with Rosemary & Browned Butter Crumb

Hey folks! Well, it’s in the middle of summer here, so why the hell am I making such a warm, autumn-fitting dessert you ask? I don’t know myself, maybe it’s because Sydney has been looking pretty glum these past few days… And I had been pondering long about what I should bake next and came down to shortbread or croissants. Both of them however require copious amounts of butter which I did not have on hand. But what I did have were apples and strawberries which were going to go bad. And without my mum here to remind be everyday to eat my fruits, they are often left neglected and forgotten until it’s much too late. And I definitely was not up for lots of hardwork on a lazy day. So I got crumblin. But we all know crumble has a reputation of being very homey, though warming it’s got no wow factor. So I decided I better do some new stuff to it. And so that’s where the rosemary and brown butter came in. 2 food trends (herbs in dessert is a thing, yes!) in one recipe. Woohoo!

Browned butter or beurre noisette has been a pretty big trend recently. I’ve heard so many fellow bloggers rave about its powers to turn any baked goods from average to woaaaaah. So I read more and more and of course more recipes claiming this, but I didn’t buy it. I didn’t think it’d make much difference you know… Plus, it must be hard work! But then one lazy morning, my brain was churning for new ideas to make crumble more interesting and brown butter just kept tugging at me. I gave in and finally googled how to make that magic butter. And what I read kinda disappointed me. I mean magic stuff should come with hardwork, I was expecting…. oh I don’t know *hands in air* caramelisation action from the oven, bain marie? Frantic stirring of some burnt butter and solid butter, like tempering chocolate or something fancy you know. In reality, it was just chopped butter -> saucepan -> melt -> fridge. So I decided to test it out. It was super. I admit defeat and take back all my past ignorant thoughts about this amazing stuff. It’s like caramel butter, so addictive you’ll probably find anything to slather on it. So yesterday was the day brown butter won my heart and there’s probably no going back as I have sworn to only use brown butter for baking now.

Brown Butter

• 250g butter, chopped evenly into tablespoon sized pieces

1. In a medium light coloured (Important so you can see the colour of your butter and prevent it from burning) saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Stir occasionally. It will start to get foamy but that’s alright, just the water evaporating from the butter. You’d want to keep stirring and stirring for around 5 mins. It’ll bubble alot and in my case it started to become hard to see the colour of the actual butter underneath all the foam. But just trust your nose and you’ll know it’s ready to go off the pan when you get whiffs of nutty, caramel fragrance or when butter is evenly golden brown with some dark specks at the bottom of pan.

2. Transfer immediately to a heat proof bowl and cool to room temperature before refrigerating until solid again. Use in place of normal butter in recipes.

Apple & Strawberry Crumble

For the base:

• 2 medium apples, peeled, oored chopped
• 2 tbs water
• 2 rosemary sprigs
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• 400g strawberries, hulled, sliced into halves or quarters

1. Place first five ingredients into a medium saucepan on medium heat. Stir occasionally until apples are just starting to soften, about 10 minutes.

2. Discard rosemary from apples and arrange apples and strawberries in an ovenproof dish

3. Top crumble topping on top evenly (OR you could bake it separately from the fruits and take it out after about 15 mins until golden brown before sprinkling onto the hot fruits) Bake in an oven preheated to 170C for about 25 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm with ice cream. Serves 4

For the rosemary, brown butter crumble:

• 1/2 cup plain flour
• 70g brown butter (recipe above)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 2 tbs rolled oats
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• 1 tbs rosemary, finely chopped
• 2 tbs brown sugar
• 1 tbs raw sugar

1. Rub in butter into the flour. Stir in the rest of the ingredients until well combined.

Hope you’re all off to a great start to the week. If it hasn’t, it’s still early on, make something yum and turn it into a good one I’ll try and have a backlog of posts so the blog won’t be too quiet when I go to the States, but no promises just yet! Stay gold x

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