Cheat's Cherry Crumble Pie

I love any form of crumble. This is one I made this weekend for after Sunday lunch. I made it in a pie base as cherries can be a bit messy and don't hold their shape as well as some other fruits.


Cheats Cherry Crumble Pie

Serves 6

You will need a 20cm (ish) tin or dish and baking beans or rice.

Ingredients:

400g can of Cherry Pie filling

250g readymade shortcrust pastry (I use Jus Rol or Sainsbury’s all butter) at room temperature

100g plain flour,

50g ground almonds

125g unsalted butter - chilled and cut into chunks

70g caster sugar

(You can omit the almonds if you want to and use 150g plain flour. I just like the combination of cherry and almond)

1. Preheat oven to 180/ Gas 4-5. Grease your tin or dish, dust with flour and set aside.
2. Roll out pastry to about just under ½ cm thickess. Use to line your tin or dish. Leave a little pastry to overhang as you can trim that off afterwards. If you do it before you may find your pastry base will shrink too much. Prick the base of the pastry case with a fork. Put a layer of baking parchment inside and pour in some baking beans or rice.
3. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes until very lightly golden. Remove beans/ rice and parchment and return to the oven for 5 minutes until golden. Once cooked trim the excess pastry off. Meanwhile gently heat the cherries up and make the crumble topping.
4. For the crumble rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs you can do this in a food processor if you want to, but I quite like it to look a bit rougher. Add the sugar and almonds and combine.
5. Pour your cherry filling into the pastry case. Sprinkle over your crumble topping. Bake for about 20 minutes until golden and bubbling. Let stand for a few minutes before serving or you’ll likely burn your mouth! I serve it with custard, but cream, ice cream works – whatever takes your fancy!

 

*** It will work for any  fruit combination you fancy. You can also omit the pastry and just have the traditional crumble. If you want to use other fruit  just chop your fruit up and heat in a pan with sugar to taste until a little soft and use that as your filling. Or cheat with pie filling because sometimes you just want it the easy way!