Nothing beats a good crumble.

This classic British pudding of stewed fruit topped with a golden mix of flour, butter and sugar is one of the easiest and cosiest desserts you’ll ever make. We cover the basic crumble topping ratio everyone needs to know, how to make a crumble with any fruit and tips on getting the nutty, crispy topping of your dreams.

Plus, we’ve rounded up 10 of our best recipes to prove how versatile this dessert can be, including classic blackberry, apple, plum, rhubarb and strawberry versions. There’s truly a crumble for every season!

The ratio you need to remember – 2 : 1 : 1  –  flour, butter, sugar, by weight

For a 20cm dish that’s 200g plain flour, 100g cold butter and 100g sugar, over roughly 750g–1kg of prepared fruit. Memorise that and you never need a recipe again. Everything below is a variation on it.

How to make a crumble with any fruit

Cut the fruit into even pieces and put it in the dish with sugar and something acidic — lemon juice, or a splash of vinegar for very sweet fruit. Add a tablespoon of cornflour to stop the juices flooding the topping. Hard fruit (apple, quince, pear) wants 10 minutes on the hob first, or it’ll still be raw when the top is brown. Soft fruit (berries, plums, rhubarb) goes in raw. Frozen fruit goes in frozen — don’t defrost it, or you’ll get a puddle.

Rub the cold butter into the flour with your fingertips until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs, stir in the sugar, and tip it over the fruit. Bake at 190°C/170°C fan for 40–45 minutes, until the juices bubble up at the edges.

Five tips for a properly crisp topping

  1. Keep the butter cold and stop rubbing early. Overworked topping goes pasty. Leave some pea-sized lumps — they become the crunchiest bits.
  2. Never press it down. A loose, uneven surface has more edges to crisp. Compacted topping steams.
  3. Add texture. Swap 50g of the flour for rolled oats, ground almonds or crushed nuts, and use demerara instead of caster for the sugar.
  4. Chill the topping for 20 minutes before it goes on the fruit. Cold fat hitting a hot oven is what gives you crumble rather than sand.
  5. Sprinkle from a height and leave a small gap around the edge for the fruit to bubble through.

The 10 recipes

  1. Blackberry and apple with hazelnut oat topping

The one everyone means when they say crumble. Bramleys collapse into sharp purée, so mix them half-and-half with a firm eating apple like Cox to keep some shape, and add the blackberries raw at the end so they stay whole rather than dissolving. Toasted hazelnuts and oats in the topping give it the nuttiness the plain version lacks. A hedgerow pudding, and free if you time September right.

  1. Rhubarb, ginger and baked custard

Two puddings in one dish. Spread a layer of thick custard over the sugared rhubarb, then crumble on top — it sets into a soft, sweet cushion between the sharp fruit and the crisp lid. Stem ginger and a little of its syrup handle rhubarb’s astringency better than sugar alone. Forced Yorkshire rhubarb in January makes it startlingly pink.

  1. Plum, star anise and almond

Plums have a natural affinity with almond, and a single star anise in the fruit takes it somewhere darker and more interesting without announcing itself. Replace a quarter of the flour with ground almonds and scatter flaked almonds over the top for the last ten minutes so they toast rather than burn. Victoria plums in late summer, damsons in early autumn if you’ll do the stoning.

  1. Strawberry, black pepper and basil

The unusual one that converts sceptics. Strawberries are usually thought too watery for crumble, and they are on their own — so pair them with a firmer fruit or roast them for fifteen minutes first to concentrate the juice. Coarse black pepper amplifies the fruit rather than making it savoury, and basil stirred through at the end is the trick borrowed from Italian strawberry desserts. Serve barely warm.

  1. Gooseberry and elderflower with polenta topping

Peak June, and a proper English flavour combination. Gooseberries are ferociously tart, so be generous with the sugar and add elderflower cordial to the fruit rather than water. The polenta topping — a third fine polenta to two-thirds flour — bakes into something sandier and more biscuity than the standard version, which stands up well to all that juice.

  1. Quince and cardamom with brown butter crumble

Worth the effort, and quinces are having a moment. Poach them first in sugar syrup for 40 minutes until they turn that extraordinary rose colour, then crumble the poached fruit with a little of the syrup. Brown the butter before rubbing it in — chill it back to solid first — and the topping gains a toffee-ish depth. Ground cardamom in both fruit and topping ties it together. This is the crumble to make when you want to show off.

  1. Roasted grape, thyme and olive oil

Genuinely unexpected, and quicker than it sounds. Roast red seedless grapes at 200°C for 20 minutes until they blister and slump, then crumble with a topping made with good olive oil instead of butter, plus a little chopped thyme and flaky salt. The oil gives a shorter, crisper texture and the whole thing lands somewhere between pudding and cheeseboard. Serve with ricotta rather than custard.

  1. Miso caramel banana crumble

Banana is badly underused in baking beyond loaf cake. Halve slightly overripe bananas lengthways, lay them in the dish and pour over a caramel loosened with a heaped teaspoon of white miso — it reads as deep and salty rather than as miso. Top with an oat and pecan crumble. Rich enough that a small dish goes a long way, and it takes fifteen minutes to assemble.

  1. Blood orange and dark chocolate

A midwinter crumble for the weeks when nothing British is in season. Segment blood oranges, catch the juice, and reduce it with sugar into a syrup before returning it to the fruit — otherwise it’s too wet. Fold chopped dark chocolate through the topping so it melts into pockets. Cocoa nibs on top add bitterness and crunch. February pudding, essentially.

  1. Savoury tomato, thyme and parmesan crumble

The final proof of the format’s versatility. Roast cherry tomatoes with garlic and thyme until jammy, then top with a crumble of flour, cold butter, parmesan, oats and a little mustard powder. Bake until the top is deep gold. It works as a side to lamb or as a supper in its own right with a green salad, and it makes the point better than any sweet version that crumble is a technique, not a dessert.