From hedgerow to pudding dish

There is a fortnight or so each September when the blackberry canes along the lanes hang heavy, the early Bramleys start dropping in the orchard, and the kitchen smells permanently of sugar and warm fruit. That is crumble weather. It is a forgiving pudding — no pastry to chill, no folding, no ceremony. A bowl of fruit underneath, a buttery rubbly lid on top, forty minutes in a hot oven. What follows is the version I make most years, with notes on how to bend it to whatever is actually in your kitchen.

Choosing and preparing the fruit

Cooking apples are the backbone of a good crumble. Bramleys collapse into a soft, sharp purée that contrasts beautifully with the topping. Eaters — Coxes, Russets, a bag of Gala — hold their shape and give a chunkier filling, which is pleasant but less yielding. A mixture of the two is arguably the best of both.

For a dish serving six generously, you want roughly 800g prepared apples and 300g blackberries. Peel, core and cut the apples into thick slices, about a centimetre, so they keep some texture. Tumble them into a large bowl with:

• 75–100g caster sugar, depending on how sharp the fruit tastes
• The zest and juice of half a lemon
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon, or a little freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 tbsp cornflour, if the berries are very juicy

Stir gently so the blackberries stay whole, then tip into your baking dish. A shallow one, roughly 23cm by 30cm, gives the best ratio of crisp topping to soft fruit. Deep dishes steam the topping and you lose the crunch.

The topping, and why you should not overwork it

You are after something clumpy and uneven, with pockets of butter and patches of dry flour that will crisp separately. Rub it too long and you get a uniform sandy paste that bakes into a biscuit. For six people:

• 200g plain flour
• 100g cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 75g demerara sugar, plus a little extra for the top
• A good pinch of fine salt
• 50g rolled oats, optional but excellent

Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips, lifting and dropping the mixture as you go, until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs with a few larger lumps left in. Stir through the sugar, salt and oats. Short of time, pulse it briefly in a food processor and finish by hand — but stop while it is still rough.

Assembling and baking

Scatter the topping over the fruit and spread it loosely with your fingers. Do not press it down. Leave a few gaps where steam can escape and juices can bubble up around the edges. A final scattering of demerara gives a nice crackle.

Bake at 200C conventional, 180C fan, gas mark 6, for 35 to 40 minutes. Sit the dish on a baking tray — blackberry juice will almost certainly escape. It is ready when the topping is deep golden, the fruit is visibly bubbling at the sides, and a skewer pushed into the centre meets no resistance from the apple. If the top colours too fast, lay foil loosely over it and give it another ten minutes.

Let it stand for ten to fifteen minutes before serving. Straight from the oven it is molten, and the fruit needs those minutes to settle into a syrup rather than a flood.

Adjusting sweetness and ringing the changes

Taste a slice of raw apple before committing to the sugar. Bramleys from a wet summer can be ferociously sharp and will take the full 100g; a dry autumn crop may need only 60g. Hedgerow blackberries are often tarter than cultivated ones, so err on the low side and serve with something sweet.

The formula takes well to substitutions. Swap a third of the blackberries for damsons, raspberries or halved plums. Pears and blackberries with a little ground ginger make a lovely late-autumn variation. Chopped hazelnuts or flaked almonds in the topping add crunch, and a pinch of ground cloves, used sparingly, lifts the whole thing.

Serving, keeping and reheating

Hot crumble wants custard — proper vanilla custard if you have the patience, or a generous pour from a jug if you do not. Clotted cream, single cream or vanilla ice cream all do the job. On a cold Sunday, with the fire lit, it ends a roast dinner properly.

Leftovers keep covered in the fridge for up to three days. Reheat portions in a moderate oven for ten minutes, or in the microwave if speed matters more than crispness. Cold crumble with a spoonful of yoghurt is, I maintain, one of the better breakfasts available to a person in October.

To get ahead, assemble the whole thing, cover and refrigerate for up to a day, then bake from cold, adding five minutes. It freezes well before baking too: wrap the dish tightly and it keeps for three months, then bake from frozen at 180C fan for about an hour, checking the centre is piping hot. Either way, the smell coming out of the oven is the same — and it is the smell of autumn, wherever your own blackberry patch happens to be.