I love autumn, with its beautiful, warm colours. It’s also the delicious season of domestic apples and lovely, slightly sour, superfood lingonberries from the Finnish woods. We don’t have apple trees of our own but luckily, family and friends usually offer us goodies from their gardens. Or you can always find them in the farmers’ market or supermarkets. We are not especially keen berry pickers either but in the last few years have spent a weekend at our friends’ cottage picking some lingonberries.

This crumble has been our family’s autumn favourite dessert for almost three decades. I used to have piles of all sorts of women’s mag recipe cuttings, collected by my mum during her lifetime. Among them, I once spotted a recipe for an oat flake crumble, made with tinned peaches. I remember trying it once in my flat during uni years, but found it far too sweet for my liking. The crumble part was nice and crunchy, though. Later on, I thought it might work with apples. But no, even that was a bit on the sweet side. Finally, as apples and lingonberries are in the same season and as I’ve always loved lingonberries, I thought of combining the two. And there it was: my own autumn crumble recipe! It’s been devoured and enjoyed by both family and friends for hundreds of times over the year – and we never get tired of it. Worth trying!

INGREDIENTS

• seasonal apples, any variety (I usually use about 10 but this depends on the size of your dish)
• 3-4 dl fresh lingonberries
• sugar and cinnamon to taste
• 8 dl oat flakes
• 2 dl sugar (caster or brown)
• 200 g melted butter or margarine

THIS IS WHAT YOU DO

• peel and core the apples and cut them into small wedges
• mix with the lingonberries on the bottom of your oven dish
• sprinkle with a little bit of sugar and plenty of cinnamon
• for the crumble, simply mix the oat flakes, sugar and melted butter
• cover the apples and berries with the crumble
• bake in c. 175° C for c. 1 h 15 mins (cover with foil if the top starts getting too dark)

The baked lingonberries give this dessert a wonderful, juicy consistency that goes well with the drier crumble topping. This desserts is best enjoyed warm with with either vanilla ice-cream or cold custard. It works both as a simply, everyday family treat, or a fancier dessert for visiting dinner guests.

YOU WILL POSSIBLY WANT A SECOND HELPING!