Easy Pear Crumble

This Easy Pear Crumble features delicious chunks of sweet pear, flavoured with a hint of cinnamon, and topped with a perfectly light and crisp crumble topping. This recipe is quick, simple and virtually foolproof – giving you perfect pear crumble every time!

Course Dessert, Pudding

Cuisine British

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 40

Total Time 55

Servings people

Calories 306kcal

Author Eb Gargano

Ingredients

200 g plain white flour (US - all purpose flour)
100 g cold butter cut into roughly 1cm / ½inch cubes (see Note 1)
100 g soft light brown sugar (see Note 2)
1 kg conference pears peeled, cores removed and chopped into small pieces (see Note 3)
1 tablespoon soft light brown sugar or to taste
1 teaspoon cinnamon or to taste (optional – leave the cinnamon out if you are not a fan!)

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 180C / 160C fan / gas mark 4 / 350F.
Put the flour and butter in a large bowl and rub together until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs (or do this in a food processor if you prefer).
Add the 100g (3½oz) soft light brown sugar and stir. (There is no need to sieve the flour or sugar, as a bit of a rough texture is what is needed for a good crumble!)
Set the crumble mixture to one side and prepare the pears. Peel them, remove the cores and then chop into bite-sized pieces – roughly 1cm / ½inch cubes – but it doesn’t matter too much, actually a mixture of smaller and larger pieces is quite nice.
Put the pears in the dish you are planning to use to cook the crumble and add 1 tablespoon of soft light brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Stir together the pears, the sugar and the cinnamon until the pears are evenly coated.
Sprinkle over the crumble topping – this can be quite rough and ready, but make sure all the fruit is covered. If it looks a bit too neat on top, rough it up a bit. You want lots of peaks and troughs to give it that really good crumble texture.
Put your crumble in the preheated oven for 40 minutes or until it is golden on top. Serve with custard, cream, ice cream or yogurt.

Notes

You can use margarine if you prefer, but personally I find the flavour and texture far better with butter.
You can use white sugar if you prefer, but I find the flavour and texture far better with light soft brown sugar. For a more caramelized / smoky taste, you could use dark soft brown sugar or muscovado sugar!
For best results, I recommend using conference pears, but you can use other types of pear if you prefer.
Suitable for freezing.
Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.

Nutrition