Gosh, what’s the point of cooking (or eating?!) if one never gets to dessert? Keine Ahnung (“no idea”) as they say in these German parts! Hello my beloved Gluten-Free peoples, Today’s recipe can be adapted to just about any fruit: perennial, tropical, whatevers! The secret is in the crumble. Everything tastes good with a little crunchy oatmeal! It’s super healthy (no sugar, no yuck!) and vegan. An all-round win!

Ingredients

• 2 cups gluten-free oats (ideally not the processed kind or the quick-cooking kind – super important that it is certified gluten-free – as you know, oats milling has a high probability of cross-contamination with wheat milling)
• 1/2 cup EVOO (you know it, extra virgin olive oil)
• 1/2 cup of cashew milk or water
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla powder
• 1 teaspoon (or more! pile it on, baby!) of cinnamon powder (I even throw bits of cinna-stick in there)
• A dash of grated nutmeg
• 1/4 cup of maple syrup (Grade C only please – also optional!)
• Any bakeable fruit of your liking. In this recipe, I used one over-ripe banana and 2 cups of frozen cherries. You may opt for pineapples, berries, mangoes, apples, oranges, kiwis, pears… honestly, whatever you have lying around that needs to be used up. Frozen or fresh works just as well. It doesn’t need to be in perfect condition either!
• Topping: roasted nuts and cranberries, soy yoghurt
• Also good with: vegan ice-cream

Method

1. Lay the fruits of crumble at the bottom of a baking dish. I find small square ones work well for this recipe.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, add all the other ingredients. Start with the dry (oatmeal, vanilla, cinnamon) and then add the wet.

3. The mixture should form little clumps. Don’t mash them too well… just kind of sprinkle them on top of the fruit. Crumbles are often made the same way with castor sugar and room temperature butter. The mixture will form clumpy oatmeal lumps that you just sprinkle over the fruits, trying to cover as much of it as possible (so the fruit doesn’t burn). In this recipe, you won’t quite have the buttery crunchiness of a butter-containing granola, but you will have something just as delicious and way more healthy! If you don’t want to use a lot of oil, you can substitute even more (or all!) of the oil for water or nut milk. It will form a softer texture, not unlike cooked oatmeal.

4. Bake at 180 degrees Celcius for 15 minutes. Voila! Done! 🙂 Serve with a scoop of vegan yoghurt or sorbet or ice cream.

That’s it for Cooking Invention Week (err… Month!) 2019! Now go out there and experiment… make your own recipes and share them below if you’d like. 🙂

Peace,

Daisy