A crumble built for two

Most crumble recipes are written for a family of six and leave you eating the same pudding for three days. This one fills a small ovenproof dish — roughly 18cm by 12cm — or two generous ramekins of about 300ml each. It takes under an hour from cupboard to table, and most of that is oven time.

Cooking small has real advantages. You get more buttery topping per spoonful of fruit, the apples cook through faster, and nothing turns to grey mush on the second reheating. It is the sort of pudding to make on a damp Tuesday in October, when the hedgerows are heavy and the evenings have drawn in.

Choosing your apples and blackberries

Bramleys are the right apple here. Their sharpness cuts through the butter and sugar, and they break down into a soft, jammy filling that stains the blackberries a deep purple. Two medium Bramleys, about 450g before peeling and coring, will do nicely.

If you only have eaters — Coxes, a russet, a couple of slightly soft Galas — use them by all means, but add a good squeeze of lemon and expect a firmer, sweeter result. Frozen blackberries work perfectly and need no defrosting at all. Hedgerow berries are smaller and more intensely flavoured than most supermarket punnets, so if you have picked your own, taste one before you decide how much sugar to add.

The filling

• 450g Bramley apples, peeled, cored and cut into 2cm chunks
• 150g blackberries, fresh or frozen
• 40–50g caster sugar
• 1 tsp cornflour
• A squeeze of lemon juice
• A pinch of ground cinnamon or mixed spice, if you like

Toss everything together in a mixing bowl and leave it for ten minutes while you make the topping. The cornflour is worth including: it thickens the juices so the base of the crumble stays syrupy rather than watery. Taste a piece of raw apple and judge the sugar accordingly — eye-wateringly sharp means the full 50g, milder fruit means nearer 35g.

Tip the fruit into your dish and level the top with the back of a spoon. Do not press it down; you want air and steam to move through the fruit as it cooks.

The topping

• 60g plain flour
• 40g porridge oats
• 50g cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 30g demerara sugar
• A good pinch of fine salt
• Optional: 20g flaked almonds or chopped hazelnuts

Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs, with a few pea-sized lumps left for texture. Stir through the oats, sugar, salt and nuts if using. Then — and this is the step most people skip — squeeze a few handfuls of the mixture together in your palm before breaking them roughly over the fruit. Those squeezed clumps become the crisp, golden nuggets on top, and they are the best part.

Baking it properly

Heat the oven to 190°C fan, 200°C conventional, or gas mark 6. Scatter the topping over the fruit in an even layer, again without packing it down too firmly. Stand the dish on a baking tray, because the blackberry juices will almost certainly bubble over the rim and you will not want to be scraping burnt sugar off the oven floor.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the fruit is visibly bubbling up around the edges and the topping is a deep, even gold. If it starts catching before the fruit is ready, lay a piece of foil loosely over the top for the last ten minutes. When it comes out, let it sit for ten minutes before serving — the filling is molten straight from the oven and will otherwise take the roof off your mouth.

Serving and making ahead

Custard is the classic, and proper hot custard made with a little vanilla is worth the extra five minutes. Cold double cream, clotted cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream all work. Leftovers, should there be any, are excellent cold the next morning with a spoonful of thick yogurt.

The whole thing can be assembled up to a day ahead and kept covered in the fridge; add five to eight minutes to the baking time to account for the cold fruit. You can also freeze it unbaked, tightly wrapped, for up to three months and bake it straight from frozen at 180°C fan for 45 to 50 minutes.

Once you know the formula, it bends easily. Pears with a few raspberries, plums with a pinch of ground ginger, rhubarb in the spring with a little extra sugar. Use gluten-free plain flour and certified gluten-free oats and it is gluten-free. Use more flour and less oats if you want a finer, shortbread-like crust. What matters is the balance: sharp fruit, restrained sugar, and a generous, buttery lid.