Streusel Topping and Blackberry Crumble
Streusel is one of those things that is more a technique than a recipe. I don't make it the same every time, and I suspect I'm not alone in that. However, for this I measured, so I could get those unfamiliar with the tasty, crunchy topping of goodness started. Then you get to improvise your own favorite way to prepare it! [amd-zlrecipe-recipe:69]
For speed I like to make it up in the food processor. I never make only one recipe's worth at a time, because it is so easy to freeze and have handy for later. In this case, for the blackberry crumble I was only going to need about a cupful, so I made up three cups worth.
Pulsing the ingredients in the food processor yields unevenly sized pieces of butter, and using frozen sticks of butter helps this, too. This is exactly what you want, you do not want to fully incorporate the fat into the dry ingredients in order to get the proper effect of struesel topping. Some will melt into the filling, while other bits will bake crunchy, and the spices add a lot of flavor to the whole effect.
I took out the amount I wanted for a large blackberry crumble, and as you can see there are nice pieces of butter - I'll freeze this for use on coffee cake, pies, and whatever else I can think of.
I scored some very nice blackberries for cheap, and knew I wanted to make the First Reader up something lovely. He couldn't decide, and it was a busy day, so Crumble happened. I rinsed the berries, then tossed them in a large bowl with about 1/3 cup sugar, based on tasting the berries and finding them sweet already - tarter berries might need more sugar, and juicy, which dictated I add about 1/2 c flour. Then I put them in a dutch oven and covered them liberally with struesel.
This went in the oven for about 15 minutes at 375 F, then was reduced to 350 F for another 40 minutes, until the struesel was golden brown and the berries bubbling up merrily all around. I took it out of the oven, persuaded the First Reader it was lava, and didn't serve until it stopped simmering. Served with homemade custard ice cream that had been waiting in the freezer, it was a divine dish, but oh, so simple.
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