Apple Crumble with Vanilla and Walnuts

It's Friday the thirteenth. Has anything happened to you? I hope not. For me, I had a slight mishap with a heavy glass and my ice machine. I was getting ice, and lazily, let the glass stand against the ice machine while opening the fridge. Not a great idea. The glass flipped - spraying ice all over the kitchen, and landing with a firm thud on the base of my big toe.

Ouch. To make matters worse, it's the same foot that I banged very hard against my coffee table last weekend - a pain that was just starting to go away. Sigh, I guess I'll be hobbling for a bit longer. Good thing I just bought three lovely food magazines (Waitrose, Delicious and Fresh)

Anyway. Here's a great apple crumble to keep you going, if you had a bad day. Or if you had a great day - there's always time for a crumble. The inspiration for this one comes from The Traveler's Lunchbox, an excellent blog that's nominated in several categories over at The Accidental Hedonist Blog Awards! Have you voted yet?

Apple Crumble with Vanilla and Walnuts
serves 4

-4-5 apples, peeled and cored
-50 g sugar
-1,5 tbsp corn starch
-1 vanilla bean
-1/2 lemon, the juice of

-60 g flour
-40 g oats
-50 g raw sugar
-70 g regular sugar
-2 tsp cinnamon
-75 g butter
-25 g hazelnuts, finely chopped
-35 g walnuts, roughly crushed

Preheat the oven to 175 °C. Divide the apples into quarters and slice thickly. Put in a bowl with the lemon juice, the corn starch, the sugar, and the seeds of the vanilla bean. (Score it and scrape out all those lovely black dots!)

Make the topping. Mix flour, both sugars, cinnamon, butter and both kind of nuts in a big bowl, and blend with your fingertips until you have uniform crumbs. Put the apples in an ovenproof dish, and top with the crumbles.

Bake for an hour. The filling should become really soft, and the topping should be golden and crunchy. Serve with vanilla custard, cream or ice cream.

Äppelpaj med vanilj och valnötter