Crumble is the ultimate sweet comfort food. It’s a fast and easy dessert that adapts well to being made vegan and gluten-free.
This plum crumble recipe comes out of the oven with a crisp golden top amongst pools of jammy baked plums. I’ve used cinnamon, lemon and hazelnuts to balance and enhance the natural flavour of plums in this crumble, but this is all easily customised to suit your taste.
What do you need to know before you make this recipe?
There’s no need to take a crumble recipe too seriously! Unless you accidentally use salt instead of caster sugar, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be tasty! You can sub the plums for any stone fruit, the lemon for orange or lime and the cinnamon for vanilla.
The amount of sugar you need will depend on the sweetness of your fruit. If your plums are a little underripe or you prefer a sweeter crumble add an extra 50g of caster sugar.
I’ve included all the notes for this easy plum crumble recipe at the bottom of the page with the hope of improving your experience here at blue border. If you found this useful, I’d love your support on Instagram, click here to follow.
ingredients
- 1.5kg plums, halved and stoned
- 100g caster sugar*
- 1 lemon, zest and juice
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1-2 Tbsp. tapioca starch**
For the crumble
- 75g hazelnuts, toasted
- 150g gluten-free flour, all-purpose
- Pinch fine sea salt
- 100g muscovado or caster sugar
- 100g non-dairy margarine
process
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.
In a large baking dish add the plums, caster sugar, lemon zest, half the lemon juice, cinnamon and tapioca starch. Toss until well mixed and set to one side.
Add the hazelnuts to a food processor and pulse until roughly chopped. Add the flour, sugar and salt and briefly pulse to combine. Add the margarine and pulse again until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
Sprinkle the crumble mixture evenly over the plums and bake for 30-minutes or until golden and crisp. Serve warm with your choice of ice cream.
NOTES: Easy Plum Crumble
Fruit
As mentioned in the introduction to this recipe, you can swap the plums for any stone fruit or use a combination of plums with nectarines, peaches, apricots or cherries.
*Caster Sugar
If your fruit isn’t very sweet or you prefer a sweeter crumble add an extra 100g caster sugar. I prefer my desserts with a bit of tartness, so this recipe as is doesn’t make an overly sweet crumble.
You can also sub the caster sugar with coconut sugar for a processed sugar-free version but it will make the fruit darker.
Lemon
If you don’t have lemon, swap it with the zest and juice of 1 lime or the zest and juice of half a large orange. Lime will work better with one teaspoon of vanilla extract instead of cinnamon, while orange will work well with either.
**Tapioca Starch
If you have very ripe fruit or are using frozen fruit, use the full two tablespoons of tapioca starch otherwise use just one tablespoon. You can also replace tapioca starch with corn starch if you don’t have any.
Hazelnuts
To make this recipe nut-free, you can replace the hazelnuts with rolled oats and if you want to use a different nut, try toasted almonds, pecans or walnuts.
Flour
I use Dove’s Farm gluten-free flour and love the way it performs. For this recipe, I prefer to use a gluten-free flour that has no xanthan gum added to it as it’s unnecessary for a crumble.
