As I have previously bemoaned before on my humble bloglette, baking for one or two, indeed cooking in general for one or two, can be bothersome. Regardless of how expensive it can be to cook large batches that either get wasted or given away, there is also the irritating recipe reduction part. What I mean by this is the time spent prior to actual baking putting my (lamentable) maths skills to good use (or rather my iPhone calculator to good use), and infrequently realising that this recipe is now so diminutive it cannot be mixed in my beloved Kitchenaid. Instead it requires me to break out into a sweat whilst I process my ingredients manually. The ignominy! So it's rather pleasing when one happens upon a recipe quite by chance, and in the habit of all great inventions, it was borne of necessity.
This recipe came about after I had a self-generated glut of cherries in the fridge. I'm a sucker for a plump, shiny, tight-skinned red fruit, and these cherries were looking all appealing and winsome at me in the supermarket. It was physically impossible not to pop them in my basket. However, with a plethora of apples, tangerines, grapes, mangoes and the like already cascading out of my fridge, after a few days I decided these would possibly require cooking into a compote for storage in the freezer until a later date or else they would not get eaten.
Oh good heavens, it was marvellous. As soon as I tasted the ambrosial juices I knew this would never see the inside of the food no-mansland that is my freezer. This was going straight in my tummy, possibly via a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I mean, there wasn't enough for a pie. Or a cheesecake. I couldn't think of anything more imaginative than hot cherries over a blob of Green & Blacks Vanilla.
And then I had the brainwave!
I quickly dug out a couple of mini Pyrex casserole dishes (glorified ramekins) I'd never had use for, and divided the contents of the saucepan between the two. I then grabbed a mixing bowl, and emptied the contents of a sachet of Dorset cereals porridge oats into it, along with 2 dessertspoons of brown sugar, two dessertspoons of plain flour and two dessertspoons of butter. I threw in a half teaspoon of cinnamon, and started rubbing in.
The flour was fairly absorbent so took another couple of teaspoons of butter before I was happy. I didn't want a crumble in the true sense of the word - I wanted something rather more nubbly. So I wet my fingers with some cold water, and started to squeeze the crumble into little rough clumps of flapjackyness. I then scattered my broken sandstone lumpoids over the two casseroles of Cherry compote. Dinner was already in a 170 degree fan oven, so that's what my crumbles went in at. For about 15 - 20 minutes.
Art is not always about straight lines, perfect angles and intent. Sometimes the artist gets the best out of the materials by just watching what happens. By the happy accidents.
The cherry compote had a lot of liquid. Some would say too much. And the rubbley flapjack crumble left little holes the juice seeped through. But shown the heat of the oven, this seepage turned to glorious toffiness, forming a sticky shell around the knots of oaty crumble. The fruit was deliciously tart against the warmly spiced, sandy, biscuity topping. This was pudding art.
A little scoop of cold vanilla ice cream melted gently into the sauce creating a magenta, cherry-scented custard. It was everything I had hoped it would be. I'd have been happy to consume the other pot the following day, but the teenager devoured it with unashamed gusto, declaring it fabulousness in a dish. I think she might just be right.
One of the joys of small batch baking is the happy fact that you can afford to be a little luxurious. A standard crumble made with just cherries is ludicrously expensive unless you are lucky enough to have a tree. But a crumble made for two allows a little more decadence, and satisfies the small batch baker all at the same time! Huzzah!
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