Nigella's Strawberry crumble

I love the colour of strawberries so got a bit carried away with the photos

As you may have noticed I'm a bit of a Nigella fiend an when I was having seven people to dinner last Friday night and needed something easy to make for pudding I thought it would be a good time to try out something from her newest book Kitchen. My mum recommended the Strawberry Crumble so I felt confident that this wouldn't be a complete disaster (lets face it sometimes Nigella's things just don't work for whatever reason).

It turned out to be the perfect pud. I assembled it when I got home and then had it in the fridge ready to go into the oven at the right time but I could have done it the night before if I'd felt so inclined. My husband kept making comments about getting strawberries at this time of year and yes it is better to buy locally and get what's in season. I have no excuse. I wanted to make Strawberry crumble. So I did and here it is...

NIGELLA'S STRAWBERRY CRUMBLE
Serves 6

500g strawberries, hulled
50g caster sugar
25g ground almonds
4 tsps vanilla extract

For the topping:
110g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
75g cold butter, sliced
100g flaked almonds
75g demerara sugar

double cream to serve

You'll need an ovenproof pie dish that's approx 1.25lt in capacity. I never know what that means so I put the strawberries in a bowl that looked about big enough. I also only used a scattering of flaked almonds on the top rather than the full 100g mixed into the crumble but that's up to you. You will need the oven pre-heated to 200c/Gas Mark 6

Hulled strawberries

1. Put the hulled strawberries into your dish and sprinkle over the sugar, ground almonds and vanilla. Shake the strawberries about to distribute the sugar etc. They don't need to be perfectly flat but you don't want it too lumpy when you put the topping on.

Sugar and stuff on strawberries

2. Make the crumble topping by putting the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl and rubbing in the cold butter. It should resemble rough oatmeal when you've finished. Stir in the flaked almonds and sugar with a fork.

3. Tip the crumble over the strawberries covering them with an even layer and press down the edges a bit. If you are making this in advance (you can make it up to 1 day ahead, keep it in the fridge and then add 10 mins to the cooking time) then plonk it in the fridge now.

Crumbled and clingfilmed

4. If you are cooking straight away then put it on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until it's bubbling and crumble like.

Completed crumble

It was yummy...