The Ultimate Berry Crumble - Food Wishes

hello this is chef john from food wishes dot-com with the ultimate berry crumble that's right unlike some of my peers I don't just tack on the word ultimate to a recipe name just to try to get extra views no when you see the word ultimate here you know that it's been carefully researched and then submitted for official designation which I'm very happy to announce was granted and if you're wondering what exactly makes this the ultimate berry crumble besides the name well it's so many things which I'm about to show you so with that let's go ahead get started with a couple cups of all-purpose flour to which we will add a touch of salt as well as a touch of baking powder and a touch of sugar and then what we'll do is take a whisk and give this a mix until we think all that's been thoroughly combined and I should mention even though I'm not using it here if you have self rising flour you could use that instead along with the sugar and just skip the baking powder in salt but anyway we'll give those dry ingredients a mix at which point we're gonna grate in one and a half sticks of ice-cold butter alright so before you start this recipe make sure you put your butter in the freezer which makes it very very easy to grate in one tip here is we do this every like quarter stick or so just give this mixture a toss with the fork so that all those little particles of butter get coated and don't start sticking to each other is this warms up and by the way if you want to cut your butter in using one of those wire pastry blenders go ahead but I think this is actually faster and easier so this is my preferred method plus if someone walks in the kitchen as you're doing this do you have any idea how cool looks to be grating butter but anyway like I said we'll go ahead and grate in one and a half sticks making sure all those shards are nicely coated in the flour alright so that technique is one reason we're calling this a ultimate crumble and once that's been accomplished we'll move on to more reasons so at this point let's go ahead and drizzle in a little bit of pure vanilla extract as well as two large egg yolks and for the record most recipes just call for one but we're using two which according to my calculations is twice as good and what we'll do is take a fork and mix this for a couple minutes until that flour sort of absorbs a very small amount of wet ingredients and after a few minutes of forking your mixture should look something like this and it will have almost but not quite moisture to hold this together in clumps which is why we're gonna stop and add the last ingredient a teaspoon or two of apple cider vinegar and what we'll do is give that a very brief mixing with the fork maybe 30 seconds or so before switching to our hands where we're gonna finish mixing this by rubbing it between our fingers all right so get in there and get in deep and just keep rubbing that stuff between your fingertips until it seems like everything's been combined but more importantly if you squeeze some of this in your hand it will form a clump that stays together and once we've reached that point congratulations our crumble is done so yes it's a shockingly small amount of moisture that makes this happen which reminds me if yours is not clumping you can add another teaspoon of vinegar or a teaspoon of water until it just starts to clump together and then what we'll do once our crumble mixture is complete is set that aside and move on to the second component which will be our fresh mixed berries and today I'm going to be using three varieties including blueberries raspberries or raspberries if you want to be that person and then last but not least we'll do some blackberries and then we'll go ahead and flavor these up with a little bit of lemon in two forms we'll do some freshly grated zest as well as a couple teaspoons of the juice and then even though it's in the crumble we're also going to need a little touch of sugar here as well I have some cornstarch which is what's gonna help thicken up all those beautiful berry juices and then last but not least we'll sprinkle in a little bit of no it's not cinnamon but that was a good guess that was Cayenne but anyway once all that's in there we'll take a spoon and give it a mix oh and I should mention when it comes to the cornstarch how much you add depends on how tight or runny you want your fruit filling or if you're going for something like a pie filling like I'm doing here you're gonna want to use as much as I did but if you want something looser and juicier and more runny then you'll simply cut the amount of cornstarch down or leave it out all together and I will definitely touch on this in the blog post and I should mention that sugars gonna dry out a lot of liquid so I generally like to do this step right before I'm about to assemble this which now that that's all mixed up I'm ready to do and how that's going to start is by transferring about half of our crumble mixture into the bottom of our baking dish which can be any shape but it should be at least 2 or 3 inches deep and be able to fit about 2 quarts of contents and what we'll do after transferring in about half of our crumble mixture is go ahead and press it down using something flat like this measuring cup and we'll want to go around and make sure that's compacted very well and since I am hoping for my fruit mixture to come out like a pie filling this is gonna act like a bottom crust which is yet another thing that makes us the ultimate crumble so we'll go ahead and place and press 1/2 our mixture at which point we can transfer in our berries and we will even those out and distribute them the best we can and then what we'll do once our bottoms been buried now that was a quality accidental double entendre pardon my french but anyway once our berries are in we will apply the rest of the mixture to the top and what I'll do is place one big handful down as is and nice small fine crumbs but as I work my way through the rest I transition to a technique called the old squeeze clump and crumble which means when you grab a handful of mixture squeeze it tight to form a clump and then we break up that clump which we refer to in the business as the mother clump into smaller irregular jagged pieces alright so simply squeeze it in your hand where it will compress together which way you can break it up into as large or small pieces as you want and obviously how fine or coarse you make your services up to you I mean you guys are after all the Forrest Gump's of crumbling clumps but I would advise not to make your crumbles too small in uniform alright I really think it's going to have a better texture and appearance if we have a wide variety of crumble sizes so dude how you want but what you see here is what I consider ideal and basically that's it once we've completed our crumble scaping this is ready to transfer into the center of a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes or so or until the top is beautifully browned and hopefully looking a little something like this and above and beyond our browning another sign you're done is that the berry syrup that forms as this bakes will sort of bubble up here and there through the surface that's another great indication it's baked long enough at this point if you want you could serve but personally I recommend you let it cool down a little bit at least until it's just warm or my personal preference room temperature so as impossible as it was I did lie mindset for about a half hour before serving some up which I am definitely gonna accessorize with some vanilla ice cream which if applied properly supposed to have a beautifully smooth seductive surface but since mind int I had no choice but to add another scoop on top and I went ahead and finished that off with a sprig of chocolate mint which is why that's so dark and gorgeous and yes in case you're wondering it does smell and taste a little bit like chocolate and that's it what I'm totally accurately calling the ultimate berry crumble is done so let me grab a fork and dig in and we'll get to the amazing taste in a minute but first I want to brag about the absolutely perfect ratio between the fruit and the crumble alright personally I'm a crumble guy well we do need a certain amount of fruit here since I'm not trying to eat a cake but on the other hand I don't want to be eating a bowl of fruit with a little bit of crumble on top so for me the proportions between those two things here we're absolutely spot-on and as far as the taste goes if there's a better bite than sweet tangy berries creamy vanilla ice cream and a crispy buttery crumble I'm not sure what that would be but if you know please share because I would really like to eat that so I really was beyond thrilled with how this came out and for something that's so easy to put together and relatively inexpensive this very well may be my favorite summer dessert and if you're going to one of those gatherings where you're supposed to bring something this is probably what you should bring just be sure to call ahead to make sure there's going to be some vanilla ice cream but either way whether you're making this for others or to selfishly enjoy by yourself which is certainly nothing to be ashamed of I really do hope you give this amazing fresh berry crumble a try soon so head over to food wishes calm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy you you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,445,418

Keywords: Berry, Crumble, Ultimate, fruit, dessert, summer, easy, baked, crispy, cobbler, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry, cake, sweet, chef, john, recipe, food, wishes, cooking

Id: kDZDYgaonjo

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Wed May 02 2018