Can anyone help with butter free crumble mix please?

Lizbetty

I've spent all morning chopping up and de-mankying a shed load of windfall apples and last leg blackberries and stewed them , and I think I should turn them into something before I freeze them as otherwise they'll just be bags of purple lurking for months (years??!) in the freezer.

I fancied doing crumble but have loads of porridge oats, some flour, various types of sugar, a bag of marshmallows, some sunflower/pumpkin seeds, walnuts, vanilla essence...but not very much butter. I have no money til the middle of next month (and will probably still not have any then..) so I can't buy any more butter .

I do have olive oil and boot polish in copious quantities...It's for my baby and toddler to eat too so I'm trying to keep it as healthy as poss too. So no boot polish, then.

Can anyone suggest any way of making nice crumble minus the best bit please??

Tia,
Luce

Seakay

From the Good HouseKeeping Forum:

"wonder if you have tried using oats ,brown sugar,a pinch of flour, raisins, chopped nuts and olive oil as your crumble mix? It's not only nuttily delicious , but a very healthy alternative to standard crumble."

I have used oil instead of butter (well, actually I use marg!) in crumble - subsitute one tablespoon of oil for each oz of fat - and it tasted fine, but if you think that it might be too olivey then add some ground cinnamon or ginger, or some drops of vanilla essence.
I think that it is good to have some flour in the crumble, but that you can substitute up to three quarters of the weight of the flour with oats.
Ground nuts can also be substituted for part of the flour (whizz them to the texture that you want). Walnuts are quite oily and when ground make what is almost a paste, so mix them in before adding more oil and adjust amounts accordingly.

I don't see why chopped marshmallows shouldn't be added, but have never tried it myself - if you have a go then do let us know the results!

Lizbetty

Thanks! That's uncanny! Bar the boot polish, someone else must have exactly the same in their cupboard as me, lol!

Thanks for finding that :beer: I'll keep you posted on how it goes!
Bestest wishes,

Luce