My Mom’s Easy Summer Fruit Crumble

Photos: Nitzan Krivine

I started baking when I was about 7, with my grandmother Rachel. I remember making cookies and helping roll out the dough and cut the cookies and decorate them. That continues until today with my mom, and my mom makes amazing desserts.

Her pear tart is wonderful (maybe next time) and this recipe, simple as it is, is one of my all time favorites.

It's light and so suitable for summer, it's got the tartness of the fruit with the delicious crumble of the dough and when paired with really good vanilla ice cream it's the best.

When choosing your fruit make sure to have some with a bit of sourness. It balances it out. Not too sour because there isn't a lot of sugar in this.

You can use any mix of fruit you like but the combination of sweet and tart brings the best result.

Ingredients

Filling

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

Summer fruit assortment – I use grapes, nectarines, peaches, plums and pears.

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1⁄4 teaspoon mace (in Hebrew 'mashia' is available in spice shops)

Dough

21⁄2 cups all purpose flour

11⁄4 cups white sugar

A pinch of salt

200 + 50 grams butter (used at two different stages)

Method

Start with the filling as it needs to sit for a while.

1. Dice the fruit into small cubes and place in a bowl.

2. Add the brown sugar, cinnamon and mace/ mix well and let sit while making the dough

3. Heat the oven to 180.

4. Mix all the ingredients for the dough in a mixer using the paddle attachment or you can easily use your hands and knead the dough just until it's crumbly.

5. Grease and flour a pan (you can use any shape you like. I also like making personal ramekins. This amount of dough is enough for about a 22-24 cm round tin). Flatten about half the amount of dough into the bottom of the tin.

6. Bake for a few minutes until lightly golden (depending on the size it can vary between 5-12 minutes or so).

7. Spread the fruit evenly over the baked base making sure to leave out most of the liquid that formed.

8. Cut tiny pieces of butter and place over the fruit in evenly spaced spots.

9. Distribute the rest of the dough crumbs over the fruit. Be generous, everyone loves this part.

10. Bake for about 20 minutes until the top is a deep golden colour and the fruit can be seen bubbling in between the crumbs

Best served with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream – or both! 

Nitzan Krivine was the joint winner of TV's Bake Off Israel Contest 2018