Cooking with kids is a great activity. It's a great way to get them involved with nutrition. It can help to break down barriers to trying new foods as well as teach them how much time, effort and love goes into preparing their food. It sets them up with life skills that they'll all be using when they're grown up. Not to mention great fun! (Just please be careful of knives!)
This is a really great recipe to make with or without children. Without them, it takes about 5 minutes to put together (if you have a 'magic' apple cutter). With them, I guess it depends on the age of your children. It's really healthy, I don't add much sugar. It's mostly just apples. The boys love eating the leftover apple cores. Like licking the bowl...except eating some apple!
Ingredients of apple crumble
- Apples, around 10 but it depends on how much you want to make.
- Raisins to taste.
- A tsp of cinnamon (optional).
- 50g butter.
- 100g flour, I used half plain, half wholemeal.
- 100g ground almonds
- 3 teaspoons sugar
How to make apple crumble
- Cut up apples
- Put in oven proof dish
- Sprinkle with raisins and cinnamon
- Whizz up butter, flour, sugar and almonds
- Put topping over apples
- Bake in oven at 200C for 40 minutes
OK, really easy! It's a great recipe for windfalls or slightly damaged apples, just cut out the manky bits. Galen age 6 always likes peeling them. Dante (4) and I use our special 'apple cutting' tool. (It looks a bit like a space ship, you push it down and it cores the apple and slices it.) We leave the skin on (not just because I'm lazy, it's added fibre!)
We put the apples in a baking tray and sprinkled over some cinnamon and raisins. (If your apples are tart, add a bit of extra sugar.)
Next, the topping. We use 100g plain flour and 100g of ground almonds. You can use all flour if you prefer, or all almonds. We whizz it up with the butter (50g) and 3 teaspoons of sugar. And then sprinkled the top with almond pieces if you like.
Put it in the oven for 40 minutes at 200C. (The more apples and the bigger the pieces, the longer it will take.) If you want to speed things up a bit, you can put the apples in a pan and simmer them for 5 minutes with a bit of water. Then finish it off in the oven.
Galen probably would eat the whole lot if I let him. As far as puddings go, it's quite healthy. Mostly apple with a bit of sugar, butter and flour sprinkled on top. And if you only use almonds and no flour, suitable for all our coeliac friends as well. And you could substitute any fruit you like really, pears, plums, black berries, you name it.
What a great way to enjoy autumn.
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Dr Orlena Kerek
I am a paediatric doctor and mother of 4 small scamps. I write about helping children to eat healthily, without lots of stress and worry. It’s all about building healthy habits that last a lifetime.
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