Gluten Free Apple Cinnamon Crumble

I had a bunch of not-so-great apples sitting in my fridge that were going soft, so I decided I needed to do something quick. I have never actually made any of those deserts that involve short bread crusts or crumble, but they seem so easy so I decided to give it a shot. You don’t event need a recipe! This is one of those things you can just eyeball the ingredients. I don’t keep regular flour in the house, so I used white rice flour, which works just fine for a crumbly crust since the lack of gluten makes rice flour very crumbly indeed.

This is super easy. All you need is:

• Apples
• Flour of any kind. I used a gluten free flour.
• Sugar
• Butter
• Cinnamon (and other optional spices. Nutmeg would be nice.)
• Lemon juice if you like it tart.

I chopped my apples into large chunks and began simmering them in a sauce pan on medium heat with a couple tablespoon of lemon juice and a tablespoon of cinnamon.  I don’t bother adding sugar o the apples. They really don’t need it.

In a large bowl, combine softened butter, sugar, and flour. For a 9×13 inch baking pan, 1.5 cups of flour, a 1/4 cup of sugar, and 3/4 cups butter creates enough crust and crumble. You can either cut your butter into your flour like when you make a pie crust, or just dig your hands in and mix it that way. It is quicker using your hands. Once it is mixed, it should have the texture of a too-dry pie crust dough. Put 1/3 of it aside and put the other 2/3 in your 9×13 inch pan. Press the dough with your hands onto the bottom of your baking pan and spread it out until you have a thin layer of dough covering the entire bottom of the pan.

Prebake your crust in the oven for 15 minutes at 375 degrees F. You want it to be crunchy before you add your fruit, otherwise it will turn into a big pile of mush. Once your apples or desire fruit has reached the texture you like (chewy, still crunchy, etc.) you can spread it out over your prebaked crust. Take your leftover 1/3 of the crust dough and crumble it with your hands over the fruit.

Pop your pan back into the over for 20 minutes, or even longer if you want your rice flour to get toasty brown. After it is done baking, you can cut it into squares and eat it warm, but the bars hold together better of you let them cool off for a couple hours.

What is nice about this type of desert is the ingredients are minimal and you can really substitute a lot if you like. You can use any fruit filling  you have on hand and just about any kid of starch based flour. You can substitute coconut oil for the butter and get they same consistency with a hint of coconut flavor. (Plus those medium chain fatty acids!) The thicker you make your bottom crust, the better this will hold as bars, but I left mine thin since I am not much of a crust person. Technically, you could ditch the bottom crust altogether and go for more of an apple crisp. I would have done that except I never have oats since they make Lucky’s eczema flare up.

If you need an impromptu desert or just need to use up old fruit, and kind of fruit an flour crumple is impossible to ruin.

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