Autumn fruit crumble by Paul Rankin

Paul Rankin delights with this Autumnal pud

Ingredients

For the filling:

2 pears
2 plums
100 g3½ oz sugar
1 /2 lemon, zest only
100 g3½ oz butter, plus extra for greasing
100 g3½ oz fresh raspberries

For the crumble topping:

100 g3½ oz self-raising flour
1 /2tsp cinnamon
75 g2¾ oz sugar
75 g2¾ oz butter

To serve:

Local vanilla ice-cream
100 ml3½ fl oz double cream
50 g1¾ oz fresh raspberries
Icing sugar, for dusting

Method: How to make Autumn fruit crumble

Preheat the oven to 180C/ gas mark 4.

Peel and quarter the pears. Remove the cores and cut into large chunks. Halve the plums, remove the stones and cut into quarters. Place the fruit in greased baking dish, sprinkle over the sugar and lemon zest. Dot with butter.

Bake the fruit for 10 minutes, until they start to tenderise and release their juice.

Meanwhile, make the crumble topping. Mix together the flour, cinnamon and sugar. Then simply rub the butter into the dry ingredients to form a coarse breadcrumb consistency.

Remove the fruit from the oven. Scatter over the raspberries, then sprinkle the crumble topping all over the filling. Press down lightly to make sure the topping is evenly distributed.

Place the crumble in the oven and bake for 30 minutes, or until the crumble is golden.

Place a generous spoonful of crumble on each serving plate. Add a scoop of ice-cream next to the crumble, drizzle with cream and scatter each with a handful of fresh raspberries.