This Vegan Christmas Crumble recipe is the perfect dessert to serve up over the festive period. It's packed full of fruit and spices with a nutty, crumbly top. Best of all, it's plant based. Get the recipe below.
Christmas desserts
A crumble is a quintessentially British pudding. It's ideal when the days get colder and the nights get darker. As a real winter warmer it is perfect for enjoying around Christmas time.
In this Vegan Christmas Crumble recipe I've given it a festive twist, using some of my favourite spices and fruit you find this time of year like cranberries.
Although Christmas pudding might be the obvious choice for serving up after your Christmas dinner it is quite traditional and heavy. This Vegan Christmas Crumble is a lighter alternative that will still end your meal nicely.
How to make a crumble top
There's little you need to do to the fruit in this recipe. Just add it to the dish and then top with the crumble. It will stew perfectly under the crumble top with minimal fuss.
The crumble top, on the other hand, requires a bit of love as it takes a little bit of know-how and skill to make.
Here's how.
- Make sure your vegan butter is cut up into small cubes and chilled. It needs to be nice and hard for this to work. We don't want soft butter that's liable to melt while we work with it.
- Toss the vegan butter in the flour.
- Rub the vegan butter and the flour together between your fingertips creating smaller and smaller lumps until it resembles coarse bread crumbs.
- You will know if you're doing the rubbing method right because your hands will be clean, only your fingertips will be covered in the fat and flour.
- Once you have breadcrumbs stir through the sugar and spices. This will add extra flavour and, in the case of the sugar, a bit of sweetness and crunch.
- Place it into the freezer and wait patiently until it's nice and cool.
- For extra crunch, add the chopped hazelnuts to the crumble top immediately before placing the pudding in the oven.
If you follow these steps you'll have the perfect crumble top when it comes out of the oven.
Fruit filling
I mentioned that the fruit filling really doesn't require a lot of effort. All you need to do is peel and core your apples and pears and then add them to a dish along with the cranberries.
Cranberries are quite sour so we add some dark brown sugar to help sweeten them up a bit. You could use any sugar but I like dark brown sugar as it has a slight treacle-like flavour that makes me think of Christmas along with the spices in the crumble top.
You will notice that we toss the fruit in some cornflour. This is so that all of the juices that are produced by the fruit become a lovely thick, sticky, syrupy consistency. Delicious!
Now we've got our crumble top and fruit filling sorted let's bake.
The recipe
Vegan Christmas Crumble
Ingredients
For the crumble top
- 150 g plain flour
- 125 g vegan butter chilled and cut into cubes
- 75 g demerera sugar
- 0.5 teaspoon cinnamon
- 0.5 teaspoon ginger
- 1 pinch ground cloves
- 1 pinch ground nutmeg
- 50 g chopped hazelnuts
For the fruit filling
- 250 g apples peeled, cored and diced
- 250 g pears peeled, cored and diced
- 250 g cranberries fresh or frozen
- 1 tablespoon cornflour
- 3 tablespoon dark brown sugar
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 200C / 400 F / gas mark 6.
- Combine the flour and vegan butter in a food processor or large bowl, and pulse briefly, or rub with your fingertips, until the mixture resembles very coarse breadcrumbs with a few larger lumps.
- Add the sugar and spices and stir through.
- Put this in the freezer for 10 minutes, or if making ahead, in the fridge until you’re ready to bake.
- Meanwhile, toss the apple, pear and cranberries with the cornflour and caster sugar until all coated.
- Add a splash of water (25 – 50ml) to the bottom of your baking dish then layer in the apple, pear and cranberries.
- Spoon the crumble over the apple, pear and cranberries then sprinkle over the chopped hazelnuts.
- Bake for 30 minutes until the apples are just soft and the crumble top is golden and crunchy.
Nutrition
More crumble recipes
More dessert recipes
If you're looking for more pudding recipes check out the dessert recipe collection.
Leave a Reply