Cherry Crumble - a Yummy Summer Treat

To make a 2 pint crumble, enough for 4-6 people

For the filling:
2 1/2 cups cherries
sugar to taste

For the topping:
75g (1/3 cup) margarine or butter
175g (1 1/2 cups) flour
50g (1/4 cup) sugar

Wash the cherries and remove stalks, halve and pit. Place in a 2 pint ovenproof dish with sugar to taste. Sweet cherries probably will not need any sugar. You can also use an alternative sweetener such as splenda or stevia if you like.

Cut the fat into the flour (or whiz up in the food processor) until the mixture is the texture of fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar.

Sprinkle the topping on top of the fruit and bake in the oven at 200 C (400 F) for 30-40 minutes, until the topping is beginning to brown and the filling is bubbling up round the edges slightly.

Serve hot or cold with custard, whipping cream, sweetened yogurt or ice cream.

Cherries for this don't have to be fresh - if you freeze, can or dehydrate cherries, they make a great crumble either alone or mixed with other fruit (we had a huge amount of pears in 2009, so everything gets mixed with pears!). I suppose you could also make it with commercial canned or frozen cherries too, but I haven't tried.

1. Sugar in the topping may be partly replaced with an appropriate amount of other solid sweetener eg stevia, splenda. I use powdered home-grown stevia leaves. You can also use brown sugar instead of white for an extra-yummy flavor.

2. Add 5ml (1 tsp) cinnamon, ginger or nutmeg to the flour before cutting in the fat for the topping.

3. Add the grated rind of an orange or lemon to the topping before sprinkling it on the cherries.

4. Of course, you can also make this with many other kinds of fruit: apples, plums, gooseberries, rhubarb, currants, blackberries etc. Blackberry and apple together are particularly good.