Healthy Apple and Rhubarb Crumble Recipe
Easy to follow along with healthy apple and rhubarb crumble recipe with a porridge oats topping, cinnamon, and ginger.
Its officially rhubarb season! Which means I’m making everything from this here rhubarb crumble, to fermented rhubarb wine and rhubarb gin recipes. Basically, its rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb till at least the 1st of May.
If you hadn't guessed, I love rhubarb. It's delicious, its sweet, its tart, and using it in drinks and food is such a quintessential British nana thing.
Just the smell of rhubarb cooking makes me imagine a little cottage somewhere in the country with a little old lady in her kitchen, pans hanging from the ceiling, rhubarb baking in the oven, wonky veg growing on the windowsill. Absolute bliss.
Now, I might be pretty much the opposite of that image being that I'm a tattooed man cooking in a one bedroom city centre apartment. But once I get my apron on… Believe you me, I become that little old country living grandma.
Granma’ Cameron you can call me for the remainder of this rhubarb season. Or the GC for short. Not to be confused with Gemma Collins.
Anyway, I digress. Today we are going to make an apple and rhubarb crumble.
So before we get that all important recipe (which will be at the bottom of this post. Sorry in advance to all you who hate having to scroll through a thousand words of me talking about apple, rhubarb and living my best nana life just to get to the recipe.) Lets cover some of the basics.
What is a Crumble
First things first we should probably cover the basics of what a crumble actually is. I mean how does it differ from similar bakes such as a cobbler or crisp. Spoiler, not in a big way to be honest.
A crumble is a dish that can be made both sweet and savoury. Most popular being the sweet version who in their right mind makes a savoury crumble anyway? The sweet variety and most popular usually consists of stewed fruit with a crumbly topping. Hence the name, crumble.
As my deep research on the subject of crumble suggests (aka what I’m about to share is copied and pasted from Wikipedia)
“Crumbles became popular in Britain during World War II, when the topping was an economical alternative to pies due to shortages of pastry ingredients as the result of rationing. To further reduce the use of flour, fat and sugar; breadcrumbs or oatmeal could be added to the crumble mix. The dish was also popular due to its simplicity.”
So what's the difference between a crumble, cobbler and crisp? Well, a crumble usually has a flour and butter topping whilst a cobbler has a biscuit topping. As for the difference between crumble and crisp, there aren't many. You could say they are exactly the same.
Crumble is more of a British way to refer to the dish and crisp would be more the American way.
Generally crisps have an oat topping whilst crumbles have a butter and flour mix. This recipe right here happens to have a oat topping for the health, so technically you could say this is a crisp. However I am British, so I’d still call this a crumble.
Make sense? Basically they are the same. Don’t think about it to much…
Which apples are best for crumble
Let’s talk apples. Delicious, sweet and tart apples. Mostly, apples taste pretty much the same. Sure, some are juicer than others, some are tarter or sweeter, but generally speaking, they all taste “apply”.
That being said, it’s pretty easy to just think about using whatever apples you love to eat. However, for those keen apple bakers out there. You will know that yes, apples taste pretty much the same, until you introduce the oven to the situation.
We will be roasting our apples down for over 55 minutes. So we need to choose the right apples that will handle that well. Nothing that will reduce to mush or concentrate the sweetness too much.
Now I’m not going to list of all the varieties of apples and what they do whilst cooking. Partially because I don’t know, Partially because there are over 30,000 apple varieties.
What I will say is those 30,000 apples can be generally split into eating apples and cooking apples. Eating apples are a lot sweeter than cooking apples, they taste perfect fresh from the tree. Whilst cooking apples have a lot lower sugar content and also tend to be quite tough to get through. They kind of taste under ripe compared to eating apples. But this works great for our cooking. Especially in a healthy crumble!
The most popular cooking apples for baking are Bramley apples, Granny smiths, Honeycrisp and Jonamac.
Rhubarb fun facts
Now we have had some serious apple talk, lets just quickly return to rhubarb for some light hearted nothing to do with crumble rhubarb talk, here are 3 fun facts about rhubarb.
The rhubarb triangle
Yorkshire has what is known as “the Rhubarb triangle”. A nine-square-mile area of dark barns where forced rhubarb is grown and hand picked by candle light, at one point this contributed to 90% of the worlds forced rhubarb and is an area probably as mysterious as the Bermuda triangle. But so much more delicious
Rhubarb leaves are poisonous.
In large doses rhubarb leaves are toxic, they can cause difficulty with breathing. So it’s best to just avoid the leaves entirely.
Rhubarb is a vegetable
Even though we treat rhubarb like a fruit in cooking and baking, it is indeed a vegetable. In 1947, the United States gave it the legal designation as a “fruit” to avoid the high tariffs imposed on imported vegetables
Healthy Crumble
One of the best things about my not-so-famous apple and rhubarb crumble, is that it's a fitness friendly crumble. Looking for a healthy dessert? well I’m your guy.
This crumble is low in sugar and full of slow releasing energy due to the Scottish porridge oats.
Its low in sugar and high in health benefits. Lest we forget rhubarb is a vegetable after all.
The thing about crumbles that make them generally unhealthy is the high amounts of added sugar and buttery crumble topping. By bringing down that sugar content and replacing it with a healthy oat topping we are left with something that not only is delicious, but still has that natural sweetness.
One of the worse things about dieting is the lack of dessert choices, which is one of the reasons I was eager to make this apple and rhubarb crumble as healthy as possible whilst still being absolutely delicious.
As a side note: Due to the slow-digesting carbohydrates in oats, this crumble will provide you with slow releasing energy throughout the day. Meaning it also works great for breakfast. Which means you can finally have dessert for breakfast guilt-free. result!
Extra notes and tips
Cutting your apples
When it comes to cutting your apples, you want to cut out the core so you ensure the perfect consistently throughout your healthy apple and rhubarb crumble. To perfectly cut your apples - after you peel them, cut off the top and bottom, then cut your apples in half and finally cut around your cores diagonally to cut them out.
Serving your crumble
This crumble is healthiest served as it is. It also has enough moisture from the apples and rhubarb to serve on its own. However, you can also serve your crumble with cream, custard or even ice cream if you so wish.
How your apple and rhubarb crumble should look
Below is a photo of how your crumble should look without the topping after your apples and rhubarb have been roasting for 10 minutes, and after the topping has been added before its added to the oven. You want to make sure the entire crumble is covered with your topping.
How thick to cut your apple and rhubarb chunks
You want your rhubarb and apple chunks to be around 1cm thick, they should look like the below photo. This will help with optimal roasting.
Apple and Rhubarb Crumble Recipe
Healthy Apple and Rhubarb Crumble
Ingredients
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 200c (180fan)
- Peel and cut your apples into small chunks then chop your rhubarb into small chunks. Add these to a bowl with the cornflour, cinnamon, ginger and sugar. Give everything a good mix then fill an ovenproof dish with your mix compacting it tightly in with the back of a spoon. Roast for 10 minutes
- Whilst your base is roasting, fill the same bowl you just used with the oats, cinnamon and honey. Get your hands stuck in and give it a good mix until all the oats are covered with at least some honey.
- After your base has roasted for 10 minutes, take it out of the oven and cover the top with your oat topping, making sure to cover every bit of that crumble base as if you hated it and didn’t want to see it no more. As if you was embarrassed by it or as if you was tucking it tightly into bed. Put it back in the oven for a further 40/50 minutes.
- Serve hot with custard, cream, ice cream or on its own.
Notes
Cutting your apples
When it comes to cutting your apples, you want to cut out the core so you ensure the perfect consistently throughout your crumble. To perfectly cut your apples - after you peel them, cut off the top and bottom, then cut your apples in half and finally cut around your cores diagonally to cut them out.
Serving your crumble
This crumble is healthiest served as it is. It also has enough moisture from the apples and rhubarb to serve on its own. However, you can also serve your crumble with cream, custard or even ice cream if you so wish.
Nutrition Facts
Calories
242.41Fat
2.3Sat. Fat
0.42Carbs
53.7Fiber
6.89Net carbs
46.82Sugar
25.71Protein
4.91Sodium
6.17Cholesterol
0The nutritional information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
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Hi, I’m Cameron, guv’nor of Smartblend. If you liked this then you’re in luck, I have a bunch more recipes like it. I share only vegetarian and pescatarian food recipes, cocktails, and drink guides with a sprinkling of wellness and mindful drinking. If that sounds like you, then stick around!
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