This afternoon I was flicking through another one of my faithful cookbooks, Maggie’s Kitchen by an accomplished cook synonymous with quinces, verjuice, Barossa chickens and home made, flavoursome food – Maggie Beer. Her cookbooks sit on a shelf in my kitchen alongside (whom I consider to be) other “Great Dames” of Australian cooking Margaret Fulton and Stephanie Alexander. 

Maggie’s recipe for Rhubarb Crumble caught the eye of my youngest daughter (who always has room for dessert) as she passed by the table and she exclaimed, “That looks like your ANZAC biscuits mum, but just a lot juicier!” The photo on page 197 of the cookbook does look delicious and homely and so I decided to make this for afternoon tea. Although I didn’t have rhubarb in the fridge, I had just bought 2 kg of large, glossy Pink Lady apples with juice that burst out at each bite. Perfect! I would make my fragrant apple filling with Maggie’s crumble on top.

Besides the gorgeous texture and fragrant flavour of this dish, this crumble is packed with the goodness of apples, fibre from rolled oats and has the added benefit of less sugar than a traditional afternoon tea cake or chocolate cake. 

I doubled the recipe for the crumble topping to cater for my large family of enthusiastic eaters, however the version below is for 4 people as specified in Maggie’s Kitchen. 

* I left out the orange zest and juice by accident because I was distracted. Yes, this happens on occasion especially when there is a three year old hunting around in the bottom draw for spare cardboard tubes to make another pirate telescope. Can’t keep “Captain Hook” waiting!

Maggie Beer’s Crumble Topping

Ingredients
125 g plain flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
100 g rolled oats
* finely grated orange zest
140 g chilled unsalted butter

Combine all of the dry ingredients in a bowl, along with the orange zest (unless your little pirate is calling). 

Rub in the butter until the mixture binds together. 

Spread evenly over the fragrant apple filling (recipe below) and bake in a preheated fan forced oven at 180 degrees for 25 minutes. Serve with double cream or custard. 

Fragrant Apple Filling
This is my own favourite combination of ingredients for cooking apples. In fact it’s so delicious that it can even be spooned over cereal, plain yoghurt for breakfast or eaten on its own as a quick snack.  

Ingredients
1 kg Pink Lady apples, washed, peeled and diced into 2 cm pieces.
100 g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 scraped vanilla bean and pod (the other half can be sealed in a snap lock bag or glass jar and used in another recipe)

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add all of the ingredients except for the apples. Simmer until the mixture is glossy brown and combined. 

Add the diced apples and cook over a low heat for about 20 minutes until the apples darken and start to caramelise. 

Remove the vanilla pod, then spoon the apple filling into a buttered 1 litre oven-proof dish. I used a ceramic Pillyvuit dish which is perfect for this type of dessert and because of the superior glaze, does not stain and can be washed with ease. 

Top evenly with Maggie Beer’s Crumble Topping and bake as per the instructions for the crumble above.