Mixed Berry Crumble with Custard

There is more fruit on the allotment than I can eat at this time of year, and a crumble is what I do with most of it. It is the least frightening pudding there is. Nothing to collapse, nothing to set, no moment where it either works or it does not: you rub butter into flour, pile it over fruit and put it in the oven. I have never had one fail.

Mixed berry crumble is also the pudding I make when there is nothing in the house but a bag of frozen fruit, and it is no worse for it. Blueberries, strawberries and blackberries go into the dish still frozen, straight from the freezer, with sugar and a couple of spoons of cornflour to catch the juice as it comes out of them.

The topping is the same sweet, sandy, buttery crumble I put on my Polish summer fruit cake, and it goes crisp all the way through. It carries over half as much sugar again as a standard British crumble, which is exactly why it crunches.

And it comes with a proper custard. Not a packet, and not thickened with cornflour either, but four egg yolks stirred into hot milk and cream until it thickens on its own. It takes ten minutes and there is one number to know, which is further down the page.

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What Is a Crumble, and Where Does It Come From?

Crumble is a British pudding, and a young one. It belongs to the 1940s, when butter, flour and sugar were rationed and a rubbed topping went much further over a dish of fruit than a pastry lid would have. The name is plain enough that it barely needs explaining, which is probably why it stuck.

The German version, streusel, is the same idea and the same word twice over: streusel means something scattered, and it shares a root with the straw in strawberry, which is a fruit that scatters its runners across the ground. Americans mostly say crisp, and there the topping usually does have oats in it, which is where the two traditions part company.

One small thing about the fruit, since all three are in the dish. Only the blueberry is a berry in the botanical sense. A blackberry is a cluster of tiny separate fruits, each with its own seed, which is why it collapses into so many little pockets of juice. A strawberry is not a berry at all: the flesh is swollen stem tissue and the actual fruits are the pips on the outside.

You will see the same pudding sold as a summer berry crumble when it is made with fresh fruit in July, and as a frozen berry crumble for the other eleven months of the year. It is the same recipe either way. Only the bag it comes out of changes.

What Makes This Topping Crunch

A crumble topping needs something to bite on, and there are three things doing it here.

The first is sugar, and a lot of it. The topping is equal weights of flour, butter and sugar, where a classic British crumble uses about half as much sugar as flour. Sugar melts, spreads between the crumbs and sets hard as the crumble cools, so a sweeter topping is a crisper one. That is the whole trade: it is a sweet pudding, and it is meant to be.

The second is size. A topping rubbed to an even sand bakes into an even, slightly powdery layer. Squeeze some of it into clumps first, break them up roughly, and those larger pieces brown on the outside while staying loose in the middle. They are the bits people pick off the top.

The third is the demerara scattered over at the last minute. It is coarse enough that it does not dissolve into the topping, so it sits on the surface and goes to a thin, brittle, slightly toffee crust. It is optional, but it is the cheapest crunch in the recipe.

A Closer Look at the Ingredients

• Frozen mixed berries Seven hundred and fifty grams, used from frozen. Frozen fruit is picked riper than the punnets in the chiller and costs a fraction as much, and for a crumble the softness does not matter because it is going to collapse anyway. Freezing bursts the cell walls, so the berries give up their juice readily once they warm through, which is the whole reason the cornflour is there.
• Why all three berries Strawberries carry very little pectin, so a strawberry crumble on its own tends to go watery. Blackberries and blueberries have more of it, and together the three of them set into something spoonable without any help beyond the cornflour. If you are using a single fruit, blackberry is the safest one to pick. Expect the filling to look wetter going into the oven than a blueberry crumble would, and do not read that as something having gone wrong.
• Cornflour Two tablespoons, tossed through the fruit rather than stirred into the custard. Frozen berries release a startling amount of liquid, and without it you get a moat round the edge of the dish and a soggy underside to the crumble. It thickens as the juice heats, which is why the bubbles round the edge should look slow and syrupy by the end rather than thin and fast.
• Cold butter A hundred and sixty grams, straight from the fridge, cut into cubes. Warm butter smears rather than rubs, and a smeared topping bakes into a solid lid. Keep it cold, work quickly, and stop while you can still see flakes of butter in the bowl.
• Caster sugar, in three places Fifty grams with the fruit, a hundred and sixty in the topping, sixty in the custard. Caster rather than granulated in all three, because it dissolves faster: in the topping that matters most, since undissolved granules bake into gritty spots rather than a crisp shell.
• Egg yolks, milk and cream Four yolks to six hundred millilitres of liquid is a rich custard rather than a thin one. The cream is only a fifth of the total, which is enough to give it body without turning it into something you pour by the spoonful. This is a creme anglaise, which is only the French name for a pouring custard thickened with egg rather than with starch. Save the whites for meringues, or freeze them.

Ingredient Substitutions

• Different fruit Any frozen berry mix works, and so do frozen cherries or a bag of frozen rhubarb. Keep the total at seven hundred and fifty grams and keep the cornflour the same. Fresh fruit works too, but use a little less sugar with it and expect less juice, so drop the cornflour to a tablespoon.
• No demerara Leave it out, or use granulated sugar instead. Granulated is not as coarse so it gives you less of that brittle top layer, but it is closer than caster.
• Gluten free A plain gluten free flour blend rubs in and bakes almost identically here, because there is no gluten development to lose in a crumble. Ground almonds can replace up to half the flour as well, which browns faster, so check it five minutes early.
• Dairy free A firm block of dairy free baking fat rubs in like butter, though the topping browns a shade paler. For the custard, a tin of full fat coconut milk in place of the milk and cream makes a good pouring sauce, and the yolks thicken it in exactly the same way at the same temperature.
• If you have no thermometer Watch the spoon rather than the pan. Custard is ready when it coats the back of a wooden spoon thickly enough that a finger drawn through it leaves a clean line that does not run back together.
• If you would rather not make custard Cream, ice cream or plain yoghurt are all fine with it. A crumble this sweet takes something cold and plain against it particularly well.

Equipment You Will Need

How to Make Mixed Berry Crumble, Step by Step

1. Heat the oven and get the dish ready. Heat the oven to 190 C, or 170 C fan, and butter a shallow dish of about a litre and a half. Pick a wide one over a deep one if you have the choice.The crumble is the reason people eat this, and a wide dish gives you more of it per portion. A shallower layer of fruit also comes to the boil sooner, so the topping spends less time sitting over steam.
2. Toss the fruit with sugar and cornflour. Tip the frozen berries straight into the dish, still frozen, and scatter the caster sugar and the cornflour over them. Turn everything with your hands until the fruit looks evenly dusty, not streaked with white, then level it off. Do not thaw or drain the berries first.Thawed fruit sheds its juice into the bottom of the dish before the cornflour has any heat to work with, and you get a puddle under the crumble instead of a sauce through it.
3. Rub the butter into the flour. Put the flour, cold cubed butter, caster sugar and a pinch of salt into a large bowl. Rub the butter in with your fingertips, lifting your hands well up out of the bowl so the mixture falls back through the air and stays cool. Stop when it looks like coarse breadcrumbs with a few flakes of butter still showing. Work quickly and stop early.Warm hands and a warm kitchen turn this to paste, and a paste bakes into a solid lid instead of a crumble.
4. Squeeze part of it into clumps. Take about a third of the mixture, squeeze it hard in your fist so it holds together, then break it up again into rough pieces somewhere between a pea and a small hazelnut. Drop them back in with the rest.The clumps give the topping something to bite on. They brown on the outside and stay loose in the middle, and a topping rubbed to an even sand has none of them.
5. Cover the fruit and scatter the demerara. Scatter the topping loosely over the berries, right out to the edges of the dish, and do not press it down. Scatter the demerara over the top now, if you are using it.The gaps let the steam out. Press it flat and you seal the fruit in under a damp layer. The demerara goes on last so it has no time to dissolve.
6. Bake it until the juice runs thick. 45 to 50 minutes. The topping should be a deep golden brown, several shades past pale, and the juice should be bubbling up round the edges. Thin, fast bubbles mean it wants another five or ten minutes.Watch how it bubbles, not the clock. Thick, slow, syrupy bubbles mean the cornflour has taken hold and the fruit will be spoonable.
7. Warm the milk and cream. While the crumble bakes, bring the milk, cream and vanilla up to just under a simmer, until it steams and the surface trembles at the edges, and take it off the heat there. If it boils it is not ruined, but let it come back down before it meets the yolks.Milk that is too hot poured onto eggs is the usual way people scramble a custard before they have even started cooking it.
8. Cook the custard to 80 C. Whisk the yolks and sugar together until pale, then pour in about a third of the hot milk while whisking hard. Pour that back into the pan and cook it over a low heat, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon and reaching into the corners. It is ready when it coats the back of the spoon thickly enough to hold a clean line under your finger, which is 80 C. Take it off early, not late.The first third of the milk warms the eggs gently instead of shocking them. The corners are where it sets first.The window: Egg yolk on its own sets from about 70 C, and only the milk around it pushes that up into the low eighties. So the gap between a custard and scrambled egg is about three degrees.
9. Strain it and let the crumble settle. Pour the custard through a fine sieve into a warm jug, even when it has gone perfectly. Give the crumble ten minutes out of the oven, then pour the custard over at the table.There are almost always a few threads that set against the base of the pan, and the sieve catches them in a second. In ten minutes the fruit stops moving and the juice thickens as it cools.

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Recipe Card for Mixed Berry Crumble with Custard

Recipe Card

Mixed Berry Crumble with Custard

Blueberries, strawberries and blackberries under a thick, sweet crumble topping, baked until the juice thickens and the crust crisps, and served with a proper pouring custard made from egg yolks rather than a packet.

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Prep

25 min

Cook

50 min

Total

1 hr 15 min

Serves

6

Per serving

725 kcal

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6 servings

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Equipment I Use

Shallow baking dishKitchen thermometerFine sieve

Ingredients

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For the fruit

750 g Frozen mixed berries, blueberries, strawberries and blackberries, used from frozen 50 g Caster sugar 2 tbsp Cornflour, about 20 g, to bind the juice

For the crumble topping

200 g Plain flour 160 g Unsalted butter, cold, cut into cubes 160 g Caster sugar 1 pinch Salt 2 tbsp Demerara sugar, optional, scattered over just before baking

For the custard

500 ml Whole milk 100 ml Double cream 4 Egg yolks 60 g Caster sugar 1 tsp Vanilla extract

Instructions

Tap a step to tick it off as you cook.

1

Heat the oven

Heat the oven to 190 C, or 170 C fan. Butter a shallow baking dish of about 1.5 litres. Shallow matters more than pretty here: a wide dish gives you more crumble surface, and the crust is the point.

2

Toss the fruit

Tip the frozen berries straight into the dish. Scatter the caster sugar and the cornflour over them and turn everything with your hands until the fruit looks dusty rather than powdery in patches. Level it off. Do not thaw the fruit first.

3

Rub in the topping

Put the flour, cold butter, caster sugar and salt in a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips, lifting your hands up out of the bowl as you go so the mixture stays cool, until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs with a few larger flakes of butter still in it. Stop there.

4

Make some clumps

Squeeze about a third of the mixture in your fist and break the lumps up again into pieces the size of a pea or a small hazelnut. Those clumps are what bake into the crunchy bits, and a topping rubbed to an even sand has none of them.

5

Cover the fruit

Scatter the topping over the berries, right to the edges of the dish, and leave it loose. Do not press it down. Scatter the demerara over the top if you are using it.

6

Bake it

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the topping is a deep golden brown and the juice is bubbling thickly up round the edges. Thick, slow bubbles are the sign the cornflour has done its work; thin, fast ones mean it needs longer.

7

Warm the milk

While it bakes, put the milk, cream and vanilla in a pan and bring it to just under a simmer, until it steams and trembles at the edges. Take it off the heat.

8

Make the custard

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until pale. Pour in about a third of the hot milk while whisking, then pour that back into the pan. Cook over a low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon and reaching into the corners of the pan, until it thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon and hold a line when you draw a finger through it. That is 80 C on a thermometer. It scrambles a few degrees above that, so take it off early rather than late.

9

Strain and serve

Pour the custard through a fine sieve into a warm jug. Let the crumble stand for 10 minutes so the fruit stops moving, then serve it hot with the custard poured over.

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Chef’s notes＋

• The berries go in frozen. Thawing them first floods the dish, and a topping that sits in liquid steams instead of crisping.
• The cornflour is in the fruit, not the custard. It is what stops the juice running off the spoon and soaking the underside of the crumble.
• Cold butter, and stop rubbing while it still looks like coarse breadcrumbs. If it turns to a paste in the bowl it bakes as a lid rather than a crumble.
• The custard sets between 79 and 83 C and scrambles a few degrees above that, so the window is about three degrees. Take it off at 80 C, or off the heat as soon as it coats the back of a spoon.
• Strain the custard whatever happens. It catches anything that has begun to set at the edge of the pan, and costs nothing.

Nutrition per serving＋

725 kcalProtein 9.5 gCarbs 98 gFat 34.3 gSat fat 20.1 gFibre 5 gSugar 63.9 gSodium 119 mgServing 332

Mixed Berry Crumble with Custard · https://chefsbinge.com/mixed-berry-crumble-custard/

Variations

• Add almonds A hundred grams of flaked almonds through the topping, or fifty grams of ground almonds in place of fifty grams of the flour. Both brown faster, so start checking at forty minutes.
• Spice the fruit A teaspoon of cinnamon or mixed spice through the berries, or the zest of a lemon, which sharpens the fruit without making it taste of lemon.
• Make it individually Six ramekins or small dishes, same quantities, 25 to 30 minutes. Good for a dinner party because they come out of the oven ready to go on a plate.
• Apple and blackberry Swap half the berries for peeled, sliced Bramley apple. Keep the cornflour, because the apple gives up plenty of liquid of its own.

Storing, Freezing and Reheating

Cover the crumble once it is properly cold and keep it in the fridge for up to three days. It is at its best on the day, when the topping still has its snap, and by the second day the crumble has drawn up some of the fruit juice and softened. Reheat it uncovered at 180 C for 15 to 20 minutes, which crisps the top again; a microwave warms it through but leaves the topping damp.

It freezes well either baked or unbaked. Unbaked is the better of the two: assemble it in a freezer proof dish, cover it and freeze it for up to three months, then bake it from frozen at 180 C for about an hour and ten minutes. Baked and frozen, it thaws overnight in the fridge and reheats as above.

The custard is the part that does not keep well. It will sit in the fridge for two days with a piece of cling film pressed onto its surface, and it reheats gently in a pan over a low heat, but it will not take a second boil and it does not freeze. Make it fresh if you can.

What to Serve With It

The custard is the point, poured over hot so it runs down into the fruit, and it is worth warming the jug first so it does not cool on the way to the table. Cold pouring cream is the other classic, and a scoop of good vanilla ice cream against the hot crumble is hard to argue with. If you want something to cut the sweetness, plain full fat yoghurt does it better than anything. And a spoonful of the leftovers on top of porridge the next morning is not a suggestion I invented, but it is a good one.

FAQ for Mixed Berry Crumble

A Few Words from the Chef

We do not make crumbles in Poland. I had never eaten one before I came to the UK, and now I make them every week in the school kitchen, where they are far and away the favourite pudding with the kids. I like mine sweet and crunchy, and this is the topping I keep going back to. It is the same one I use on my summer fruit cake, which is how I know it works over almost anything. If you make it, let me know how it turned out in the comments below.