Fruit crumble with an oh-so-tasty difference

Fruit crumbles are popular, easy dessert options, and you can use just about any fruit: fresh, canned or frozen that you have to hand. But I recently learned a wonderful trick with crumble that I would like to share with you. This recipe is once again based on one drawn from my new favourite 200 veggie feasts. The 'trick' can be applied to pretty much any crumble recipe, but I'll give it a context, shall I?

Oven temperature

180C

Ingredients

500g plums, halved and stoned
1 large pear, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
100g caster sugar
125g plain flour
50g butter, diced
125g marzipan, coarsely grated (this is the secret ingredient, ladies and gentlemen)

Method

• Arrange the fruit in a pie dish and sprinkle with half the sugar.
• With your fingertips, rub the rest of the sugar, flour and butter together, until you get a consistency like breadcrumbs (you can also use a food processor for this).
• Gently stir in the marzipan.
• Spoon this mixture over the fruit.
• Bake for 35-40 minutes until golden brown. If it starts to brown too quickly, cover it with foil for a while. Otherwise you'll end up with burnt crumble over still-raw fruit.
• Serve hot with cream, custard or ice cream.