What is better? Honestly, what is better than having apple crumble? It's just the season to have crumbles. We're in November, and I think autumn is just that incredible time when there is an abundance of certain fruits, and certainly where I live. that is happening at the moment. People are gifting their excess apples to their neighbors, and that's what's beautiful about living, you know, sort of in the middle of nowhere. People are just so kind. And we have a little community table where people will leave bowls and bags and sacks of apples and you just go and help yourself or people may have plants, et cetera. And at the moment we have all of these apples that are beautiful and I know they're eating apples, a lot of them. However, I use eating apples to cook with. And I realized, That I had this excess of apples, and how many apple cakes can I make? However, this is just the best bit, honestly, the best bit ever. I walked into a supermarket, marks and Spencers, and I remember a few years ago there used to be this item that I would buy from the free from aisle, and well, It's a couple of shelves, isn't it? It's pretty small, but there was this product that I used to love, and it was a crumble mix. I don't know about you, but sometimes you're coming from work, you think, right? I've got the energy to slice the apples, but blending flowers and putting the butter in, et cetera, you know, sometimes we just want a really good quality ready mix. And this ready mix you, you just added melted butter. And may I add as well? That's when I realized the trick to making gluten-free crumble is not to have butter in solid form or margarine, and it's solid form. The trick is to melt your butter so it coats more of that gluten-free flour, et cetera, and makes a much better. So thank you very much for the packing mix. All those years ago I realized, ah, this is what I've been doing wrong, and this is why I'm never a hundred percent happy with my Cru. But sometimes I just can't be bothered to make crumble myself or you know, you may be in a different house and at the moment I I am in a different house. I'm at my parents' house and there isn't cinnamon in the cupboard. So you'd have to go to the shop and buy cinnamon. And you know what happens when you go to the shop to buy one item, something like cinnamon. You're buying abundance of things, don't you? I don't know. Maybe you're not like me, but I, I think there's a few of us like this. I went into Mark Spencer's last week, and I, I was so excited. Honestly, if I could have done a cartwheel, I would've done a cartwheel, but I knew that if I tried, I would annihilate the store. So anyway, I, I just looked and there was this crumble mix on the shelf, and I, I, I was so happy. I was so excited. I picked up two packs. And as I went through the till and the lovely lady said to me, oh, have you got everything? I said, I can't believe I'm, I'm so excited that this has come back as you looked at me and said, so yeah, okay, But people just don't get it, do they? When they're not in our world, our gluten-free world, they don't realize how excited we get over something that makes our life simpler. People out there, they can decide to buy a crumble that has been made in a supermarket or a high end farm shop, or they can buy the crumble mixes. They can do all of this when they want to, but when we're gluten free, we just can't because these things are not out there for us. We've got to check the blinking ingredients all the time. So I was just so excited when I found that it is back. And what made me even more excited about this, and this is probably just a coincidence, can I just say this is a coincidence, however, is there such a thing as a coincidence? I don't know. But I, I went to a an event and it was for Instagrammers, podcasters, bloggers, et cetera, in the gluten free niche. We, we went, we were at the Allergy and Freeform show and we were invited to meet Marks and Spencer's and, and they are putting something together, which will really change something. I can't say anything about it. I'm sorry I'm sworn to seas there, but it's good. It's got a big thumbs up from me. And we had sell, fill out a questionnaire, a survey, and they said, are there any products that have gone that you'd really like? and I said two products. What happened to the crumble mix? The crumble mix was so amazing and it just disappeared. I, I just don't know why. And the other one that I said was their chicken gravy, the gluten-free packets of gravy. I know these things are not cheap, but oh my word. If you have people come round and you just think like, I make gravy, I make lovely gluten-free gravy, but it does take time and I do have to boil vegetables for it and you know, I need to good hour to make good. So sometimes you just want to make a beautiful gluten-free toad in the hole, throw some sausages in, have some incredible vegetables going and just heat the gravy. So I've asked if they could bring back that chicken gluten-free gravy, because I thought it was amazing. Nobody knew it was gluten-free. And when you are stuck for time and you want really good tasting food, why not? So anyway, that's no long, that's not come back yet, but when I saw this gluten-free crumble oh my word, I, I was just so excited. And today I've used it and it's in a box. I, I'm, I've. Melted the butter. Just add the melted butter to this crumble mix and it is ready to go. On top of your crumbles, there are no gooey fingers covered in oats and flour and cinnamon. There's no more looking in the cupboard thinking. I don't have any gluten-free o. I haven't got the right type of flour. I used all that type of flour the other day. It's just really lovely to have a couple of boxes in as treats. So that was great. And, and I had these apples and they're eating apples and I love using eating apples to cook with. And I thought, let me just make a beautiful apple. Crumble. So I put the apples in with a couple of tablespoons of water, put the top on. I never, never, never add sugar before they've cooked because you don't quite know what's gonna happen in the cooking. Sometimes they're just sweet enough and I think I put about a teaspoon of sugar in. Most people would say you wouldn't even know notice. But about a teaspoon of of sugar. Oh my Lord. I am so excited that I'm gonna be having crumble and I had five big eating apples that looked more like small bakers and. I put them two dishes, two brown, you know, the brown urban wary type dishes. And oval one, and a small round one. And I thought, you know what? Sometimes it's just nice to bake the whole one and eat it all at once and then rather than having one large one where you take half of it out cause you've had your three portions out, and then somehow it goes a little bit crispy, doesn't it, on the edge. So that, that's what I've done and I'm just so excited about this. I, I really am. And I think people. It's the little things that make us excited, gluten free. If we find a, a biscuit that tastes like a real biscuit, you know, we go, woohoo. If we find a biscuit that doesn't just taste of sugar, we go, I'm excited. So well done to Marks and Spencer's. I really don't know. As I say, it's a coincidence it happened. They would probably think, Hey, you know, we probably need to bring out a crumble. But I have said, oh my word. Thank you so, so much for, for bringing this back out. And what I wanted to do was share with you that there is something there that you can get. that you can bake really easily when you've got an abundance of apples or you, you find some apples, or there's some apples that need cooking. Or you find that you've got a, a pie, a tin of pie filling somewhere in the cub, and you think, what do I do with this? You might find that you've got some plums, some peaches. You can make a crumble with whatever fruit you want. That honestly, Just create crumbles. Blackberries, I know it's past Blackberry season in the uk, but that's the love thing, isn't it? When you see people stopped at the side of the road and you know what they're doing. They are picking the, the blackberries and there are so many different types of brambles and black bees, et cetera that you can find. The season comes from about August to late September, October. Then we've got, oh, let me tell you as well, something else was, one of my neighbors said, look, I've got loads of dams, we've got a little WhatsApp group. I dunno if you are the same in your area, but we've got a little WhatsApp group and if people have got ex, you know, an abundance of chilies that have grown or plants, and anyway, they had damson. So my lovely neighbor pop drowned with this bucket. With some damsons in, and I tipped them into my huge great jam pot and just used the sugar that I had in the cupboard and I thought, well, we'll just hope for the best. And with Damsons, if you've made, ever made Damson jam, it's got this beautiful, almost sour taste to it. You know, like almonds it, it just tastes incredible. It really does. So I made this dams and jam and then you've got the added thing. I always leave, I, I don't cook them in half or anything, I just leave them to boil with the sugar to make the jam. And I don't like my jam overly set. And I never add as much sugar as people tell you to cuz I think I'd always like it a little bit more running and not as sweet. I really want to taste the fruit. So I have this Damson jam, and then you've got to pick, I have to leave it to go. Cool. Practically, well to warm rather than boiling hot, because then you've got to pick all of the little middle bits. Is it a stone? Is it a pip? Who knows? It's these tiny. And then you've got to make sure that all of the rest of the dams and pulp is off them. It's a really, really long, drawn out process, but, oh my word, is it worth it? And one of my friends, I gave them a little jar of this dams and jam that I'd made, and she's, it was so lovely. And here's an idea that I'd never thought of, but oh my word, do I use this now? She says, oh yes, I had some bread or in crackers, or a plain cake with a bit of qu or some cream cheese on, and then put the dams and jam on top because it's not sweet. There is just this dams and pungent almost harmony flavor comes kicking through and it marries so well with. With like a cream cheese or a co. So I started doing that as well. And it's just so tasty, so, so tasty. So in this gluten free world where we all always think we don't have the choice, which, which is true, we don't have the choice when we go out, but hey, the world is opening up. We've got a crumble mix that we can just whip up a crumble in no time at all. And I know we can normally, but when you go to the CO and you've run out a cinnamon and you really want cinnamon for your apple crumble. Well I do. I know there's people who hate cinnamon. And I just couldn't be bothered to go to the shop. I just couldn't. So I was so happy to have this in there. And then when we look at some of the jams that we can. We know that there's gonna be more fruit in than anything that we can buy in a shop, and it just tastes incredible. So it, I'm always amazed at Village community, Hamlet spirit. Where things are shared and we share them so much, it, it, it's just lovely. So I, I just love getting some free apples that have been grown in somebody's garden or they're orchard and I know there's no pesticides. Oh, they're just lovely. So I have these two crumbles now that we are gonna have for dinner, and then we have beautiful dams and. And also the other thing, and I know I've mentioned this on podcasts before, but just using up old oranges and cutting them, slicing them. I, I will share a recipe one day, but marmalade I always thought was really quite difficult. But if you just cut them into slices, quite thick slices, throw in a pan with some water, with some sugar, I can't actually remember the, the. I'm sure, I'm sure it's equal amounts of sugar and fruit. Well, with me, I'm always gonna reduce it and a little bit of water only a little bit of water and just boil it. And you will be absolutely amazed with that. And, and I realize then, But what you can do is after you, after you've made that, so have a look on my website and I will put I will put a recipe on there that's gluten free angela.com, under the recipe section. And I realize that you just boil and boil and boil and boil on a, on a, on a low boil, on a little simmer. And when you actually bottle this stuff, you've got all this thick. Whereas if you take the peel out, you can actually use that, can't you? So leave all of the, the flesh in this marmalade, but take the the peel out and you can use that in your Christmas cakes. You can use it in a beautiful steamed sponge. If you want something like a Mandarin or a clementine sponge and depend. If it's in a fruitcake, of course you can have thicker bits, but if you want that in a steam sponge and if you just want to taste it, infuse it, then slice it pretty fine, and, and it just means that we are creating the most tasty things in our kitchen. And we're just use utilizing every last scrap, aren't we? And I just wanted to share this with you today, that you can go out and you can get a beautiful crumble. You don't have to blend flowers, even though when you look at the packet, there's, you know, the equivalent of a store. Flower blend in there, and I, I do u happily use marks and Spencer's flowers. Think they're great. I use the free one as well, F R E E e, so that one. But it's just so convenient and so easy in such a busy, busy world. But you know what? If you haven't got one of those in the cupboard, but you've got some apples kicking around, or you've got some peaches kicking around or even tin items, why don't you just heat that up and put some custard over the top or a little of cream over the top? I think sometimes it's so underrated. I really wanted a, a dessert. The other, the other evening I. I haven't actually got anything made. We've eaten the last of the cake. I looked in the cup and I thought, oh, apricot halves in a tin. And I suddenly thought, when I was young, we used to have things like tin fruit with it. Was it carnation evaporated milk? That, but I had some cream and I thought, why don't I just put them together? It was fine, absolutely fine. The apricots weren't as sweet as what, you know, if you've got fresh apricots, but it was still lovely. And so I could sit there and have a dessert cause I don't really eat that much ice cream. I'll eat ice cream if it's an unusual flavor. But I probably have ice cream a couple of times, couple of times a year, if that. So the others in the household had a nice. I scream on a stick, and I had my tined apricots with cream. Now, normally I have tined apricots in because I do a cake and, and it's a cake where you put some brown sugar, you put a little bit of butter on the bottom of a 10 of a baking 10 cape tin, and then you sprinkle. brown sugar on, and then you put apricots apricot halves, cut side down, and then you put your cake mix on top of that. Now, the apricots, it's best to let them drain a little bit before you put in there because they, they, there can be a lot of moisture, but that's why I've got two or three tins of Apricot Hal. In my cupboard because of this cake that I make. And I, I thought, well, why do I not eat these? And they were really nice. And I've realized I've got lots of other types of tined fruits in there and I've got tin cherries in there and I've got other types of fruit. And then I thought, I'll make a cake. And I didn't actually have enough cherries to go on the top, so I opened a tin of peach slices and put all these peach slices on the top of the cake and then pop put pistachios on top and a little bit of rose syrup on top. Cause it's quite a, it's quite a, a tasty cake with lots and lots of spices. It's a sweet spice mix that I, I put in there from honey and coke and guess. That came out beautifully as well. And I, I think sometimes we always want to buy fresh. We always want to go to the shops and, and, and get the ingredients that we've always used. And this has proved to me why sometimes when I go to my favorite deli, the topping on a particular cake may change from apricots to peaches to plum. And it's whatever in what is in season or whatever, we can use whatever we have an abundance of we should be putting in to these beautiful cakes. So we are in November in the uk. This is when this podcast is being made the, but it doesn't matter what the season, we can always have tin. Or we can freeze things. And in my freezer, I, I managed to get hold of, I dunno why, but I managed to get hold of some rhubarb a couple of months ago and I thought, well you're not actually supposed to cut a rhubarb plant after July or use any of the, the fruit after July. But who knows where this has come from? I bought it cuz it looked amazing and it was amazing. So I cut half of it up and put it in the freezer in a. and I thought, because then I can take that out during the winter, can't I? I've got cherries that I bought in season, a huge, huge, great box of cherries. And we went through them and I put them, I put some in a cherry gin, the cure for one friend for Christmas. I bottled cherries for me. I made so many cherry cakes. I made cherry pie. again, that's something else that I could have frozen, but I, I actually ran out cherries. I can't believe how many kilos I went through in the whole weekend making things. That was lovely. So we can plan and prepare for the future, and we can also use things that attend. Can you name it? So just have a, have a go. Make yourself a Crum. Get a crumble recipe if you, if you want to. It's just certain times. I, I, I, I suppose I'm a little bit lazy at times. I didn't want to get that on my, my fingers, but use whatever you have left over in a cake. Like I, I, after I'd had some of these apricots, I had some left. So I made a small cake and put the apricots on. You can cut them and put them inside within the sponge and just bake it. And then as people bite into this, what is quite a plain cake, a normal vanilla sponge cake, they're suddenly getting these beautiful little pockets of peaches or apricots, whatever you have left over. And I think we forget to do that, don't we so often? So I hope I've inspired you a little bit to go into the kitchen, think what do I have in the tin that I can use, or let me go and get some of that crumble. Because it's all about making our life as exciting as possible when it comes to food and within our gardens, within the hedges, with within our neighbors. Gardens, or even in our local shops, there's just an abundance of beautiful products and produce that we can get. And if you're not in the uk, and I know a lot of my people who listen to this podcast are not in the uk, hello. And some of you are on very, very, very small parts of the. And one of those small parts of the world is the Farrow Islands, you know I dunno what you have there, so please let me know. But yes, crumble is just one of the most incredible British creations and it is just putting a mixture of butter or margarine. And flour, and if you want smokes in there, putting that in as well. I think the gluten-free key is it doesn't matter whether we're baking a cake or whether we're making crumble, it needs to be a little bit damper than we expect it to be, and that's a little bit of agl, gluten-free golden rule. So that's why when you melt the butter. It just seems to blend everything so much better. I know in the past I have, I have sort of done the, the crumble where in the rubbing in method where you rub it in and it doesn't mix with the flour in the same way that when you are, when you are making a non-g gluten free crumble. So that's why I always say even if you are using a normal recipe that you can get on the. I'll put one on my website at some point as well under gluten free angela.com/recipes. But just melt your butter and I think you'll find that the, the results are a little bit better. So let me know what are you baking or creating this week? I hope I've inspired you to, to get in the kitchen and do. even if it's a simple sponge cake and just cut up some, some apricots, some apricot halves and put them in the cake. Honestly, it makes all the difference. And if you can get a sweet a sweet mix of a sweet spice mix. And I get mine in front of Honey and Co. That just gives a totally different dimension. It really, really does to, to what is a plain cake, and suddenly you've got this depth of flavor and these pockets of apricots and a few pistachios on top. And why don't we put a bit of orange blossom or a rose water on there. Honestly, just throw the whole stuff in and just create. And I know when I've done that, people have just said, wow, this is incredible. It's like, yeah, I didn't have the, I didn't actually have the products for the recipe, but I just thought I'd improvise. Sometimes I might not have the Sweet Spice mix, and sometimes I might put Mali in there just a hundred percent. And people say, wow, are almonds in it? What is this flavor in here? And it's just lovely. And put that with a beautiful bit of, you know, mix up. Don't just use cream. Mix your cream with cream cheese, and that will give a whole different element as well. It's like a mini cheese cakey thing on the side of a piece of cake. So have fun, experiment and let me know. Let me know how your baking goes and what you've created. This is Angela from gluten-free. Angela and I will be with you again. Sorry it's been a couple of weeks, but we've just had a few things that have happened which have meant haven't been able to get podcasts out. So back now and I will see you soon. You take care. Bye.