Apple and Blackberry Crumble

Heat the oven to 190C/375F.

Taste a raw piece of apple before you commit to it. It should be sharp enough to make you wince, because the topping carries 80g of sugar and a sweet eating apple underneath bakes out flat and cloying. With a milder apple, drop the fruit sugar to 40g.

Toss the apple chunks with the lemon juice, caster sugar, cinnamon and cornflour until every piece is coated.

Fold the blackberries through with two or three turns only, so they stay whole instead of bleeding the dish purple.

Tip the fruit into a 1.5-litre baking dish.

Level it out without pressing it down.

Rub the cold butter cubes into the plain flour with your fingertips, lifting the mixture high out of the bowl and letting it fall back so it stays cool.

Stop while it is coarse rubble with butter pieces still the size of small peas — not fine breadcrumbs, and not a paste. Butter worked too far, or a kitchen too warm, gives a sandy dough that melts into a solid lid over the fruit instead of a crumble with texture.

Put the bowl in the fridge for 10 minutes if the mixture starts to feel greasy or claggy on your fingers, and carry on once it is cold again.

Stir in the demerara sugar, oats and fine salt. This rubble is a close relative of the toasted honey granola in this collection, which is the same oats and sugar baked on their own until they clump.

Scatter the topping over the fruit in loose clumps rather than an even sheet, and leave it unpressed. Packed crumble steams from underneath and never crisps.

Set the dish on a baking tray to catch whatever boils over.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the topping is deep gold and the juices are bubbling up thick and syrupy at the edges rather than running thin.

Rest for 15 minutes before serving, so the fruit stops being molten and the juices set enough to spoon.

Serve warm, with cream or the vanilla custard in this collection, which is the partner this dish is built around.