I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, and so desserts aren’t something I normally get too excited about – but there’s something about winter that makes me start to crave warm puddings (and custard if I’m honest … yum!)

So not too surprisingly – with winter well and truly here – on a recent trip to the supermarket I found myself taking a slow stroll through the dessert aisle.

Since I’ve been seeing a nutritionist (see here) I’ve been much more stringent about not just checking out the usual calorie/fats in food, but also the protein and carbohydrate levels as well. So I picked out a few of the usual suspects to check out their nutritional info panels – (let’s face it however a pretty pointless exercise when you’re comparing apple pie with sticky date pudding – but at least I’m thinking about trying to be good.)

What struck me horror however was not the nutritional information. Right next to the panels are the ingredient lists which I found to be full of ‘artificial this’ and ‘additive that’ – and very little in the way of anything natural or real – yuck!

As I said here, I’ve always taken a fairly balanced approach to eating – eat what you want, as long as it’s in moderation and you make it yourself from raw/fresh ingredients. A home made pudding was the obvious option.

Traditional apple crumble was one of the first desserts my mother taught me to cook as a child – but it’s normally made with flour.

I’ve been substituting flour with almond meal a lot recently – not only to minimise my wheat (carb) intake, but also to choose a higher protein option instead – so figured I’d have a go at making the crumble with almond meal. I’d never done this before – so I made the recipe up as I was going along.

Ingredients:

• 8 Granny Smith apples
• Cinnamon powder
• 1/2 cup sultanas
• 1 cup almond meal
• 1 cup oats
• 1/2 cup coconut sugar
• 75g butter (melted)

Method:

• Peel and cube apples and gently boil in wanter until starting to soften.
• Drain apples and put into base of an over-proof dish.
• Mix in 1 tsp of cinnamon powder and the sultanas.
• In a bowl mix the almond meal, oats, sugar and butter – then put on top of the apple base.
• Bake in an oven at around 170 degrees for about 30 minutes – or until starting to brown on top.

It was a bit of an experiment – but it actually worked – and is now on high rotation throughout winter in our house.

CP x