Rhubarb crumble – Almost too easy to post.

“We haven’t had a decent dessert in ages.” whinged the youngest. This was a clarion call to eldest. “Yeah! Why haven’t you done something nice for us?” she chipped in to the conversation. “Make a pie”. They were putting me under pressure. Would I waver? Would I give in? Would I crumble? Of course I would…

Of course I would crumble. Rhubarb and Ginger Crumble that is.

Thinking to self: That is a pathetic excuse for an introduction. You can’t write a post for a rhubarb crumble. There is practically no skill involved. There are only a few ingredients and any fool can prepare it. 

Talking to you: This wonderful simple recipe is for everybody. You will have fun preparing it and your family and friends will like you better for it. Here’s the ingredients:

• 500 grammes of rhubarb
• 110 grammes of light brown sugar
• 40 grammes of dark brown sugar
• 150 grammes of self-raising flour
• 90 grammes of butter
• A thumb sized piece of ginger

A very small ingredients list. Hard to believe this made it to a food blog.

Sieve the flour into a bowl. Slice the butter into little cubes. Work it into the flour until you have  a nice crumble mixture.

Work in the butter. This takes about 3 minutes. Really difficult NOT.

Add the dark sugar and mix. Stick this in the fridge.

Thinking to self: How do I intimate that there is anything difficult or special in this preparation? It’s far too easy to be bothered posting it. 

Talking to you: Chop the ends off the rhubarb and slice into thumb sized pieces.

Not a lot of skill here either. Any fool could cut the rhubarb.

Slice and then finely dice the ginger. Put the rhubarb, remaining sugar and the ginger into a saucepan along with a very small amount of water and heat until the rhubarb starts to break down.

A bit of skill in photographing the water. Now we’re getting places.

Carefully pour the mixture into a baking dish.

They will appreciate a pouring shot if not the cooking.

Pour the crumble mixture over the top.

Note the mix of crumbly bits. Very important to have some nice big bits in there.

Smooth it out a bit and then put it in the oven at 200º C for 45 minutes.

WOW. It looks pretty ordinary when it comes out of the oven.

Whip the cream. Serve the crumble with a nice dollop on top.

Dollop it on. The cream is very nice with this easy to prepare dessert.

Thinking to self: There really is very little to preparing this. Will anybody be bothered to read this post? They might if I tell them what the family though about it.

Talking to you: Not withstanding the ease of preparation and lack of any real creativity (except adding the ginger for some nice background heat), this is a winning dessert. It’s real comfort food and because rhubarb is one of those things that seems to be really seasonal and not flown around the world, it has some scarcity value. In short, cook it while you can. The family loved it! 

Thinking to self: I hope they try it.