A Disasterous Start - Apple Goo

And so began my year in the kitchen. I had long been meaning to make apple crumble. It's such a warm, homely recipe, that goes down a treat with custard or ice cream, so I thought I'd start the year off with it.

Surprisingly, the last and only time I had made apple crumble was in my Yr 8 Home Ec class, and I had no idea what the recipe was then, so I needed a new recipe. Who better than to turn to but Google who promptly directed me to this recipe. But be warned, pictures can be deceiving. My picture is much more accurate..



Had I been smart enough to read the reviews of the recipe before I started making it, I would have known it was a disaster waiting to happen, but clearly I wasn't that organised.

And so began my adventure:

Ingredients (serves 4)

• Melted butter, to grease
• 115g (3/4 cup) plain flour
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 180g butter, chilled, cubed
  
• 140g (2/3 cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
• 35g (1/3 cup) rolled oats
• 4 apples
  
• 2 tbs fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 tbs caster sugar

The first step was to grease the pan. So far so good.

Step 2 - Rub the butter into the flor so that the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. This is where it all fell apart. Rather than breadcrumbs, I ended up with a paste.

Not one to quit, I continued, adding the brown sugar and rolled oats. Didn't help much, Now I had semipaste with bits of oats sticking out of it. Nevertheless, I perceviered and continued on, preparing the apples, spreading the semi paste mixture over it and then sticking it into the oven.

Thirty minutes later, out came this gooey, bubbling, buttery mess. You could literally see the fat oozing from it. I was brave enough to eat it, after I tried to scoop out all the excess melted butter... It was no crumble, but rather apple goo. Admittedly, it didn't taste too bad, but was nothing like what I had hoped for.

Moral of the story? If you're stealing recipes off the internet (which I always do) make sure you read the reviews...