Sunday, July 31, 2011

Apple and strawberry crumble with barley flour



This month I wanted the free spirit bloggers to bring to the rest of you dessert recipes with some not so commonly used ingredients. I cannot say unusual ingredients, but some that are not commonly used. The rest of the FSBs have very interesting ingredients while I took an easier challenge - Barley / barley flour as key ingredient with fruits as favourable ingredients.
When my parents visited us in Johor, my then neighbour and good friend, SewLee had invited us for tea. She knew well that my parents do not eat eggs. So she baked eggless cakes, cookies and some vegetarian savoury treats for us. Her daughter had made apple crumble for us then. I recalled that and asked Sew to mail me the recipe. I was grateful that she sent me this and her apple pie recipe too.
Apple crumble with normal flour is very easy to bake and quick too. I just replaced the plain flour with barley flour. I had to make some adjustments with the flour measurements, otherwise I followed my friend's recipe for the rest. And I added strawberries too.
There were some ideas I picked up browsing the internet. I have copied the texts from the website I have linked to the same. These were pointers that helped. I have also tried the pie crust with a combination of powdered pearl barley and brown rice, which I will share at a later date. (I am leaving for India for a month's holiday, and hence my posts will not be regular.)


Baked goods such as cakes, cookies, pie crust, pancakes, quick breads, and muffins that use baking powder and baking soda as leaveners do not depend on gluten and yeast for rising and structure. Soft flours with less gluten, such as cake flour and whole-wheat pastry flour, and flours with little or no gluten, such as rye, barley, and oat flour, work well in these baked goods. Bread flour, with its higher gluten content, causes cakes, cookies, pie crust, pancakes, quick breads, and muffins to be less tender.

Source: http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/tools-and-techniques/baking-questions2.htm

As white flour alternative:

½ cup barley flour + ¼ cup brown rice flour + ½ TBL arrowroot powder Barley – pearled barley has the outer layer removed. Barley flour makes excellent pie crusts and cookies and mixes well with brown rice flour.

Source: http://www.lifestyleforhealth.com/white-flour-alternatives.html

Now to the recipe:
Ingredients:
5 apples Cored and sliced
10 strawberries pitted
1 tsp cinnamon,
1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar,
125 grams (1/2 cup heaped) butter
1 cup barley flour
1 tablespoon all purpose flour



Cook together, apples, cinnamon powder and the sugar until well combined.
It is also okay that you do not cook the apples until soft. Just cook them to absorb the sweet of the sugar and the flavours of the cinnamon. I microwave cooked them for about 5 minutes. The apples were holding the crunch even then.
Mix flour and brown sugar. Cut butter into the mixture. Gradually work on this mixture with tips of fingers or with a fork.The mix will be of the texture of bread crumbs that are sticking well together.
After a while they may be slightly gathered and well incorporated.
Pre heat the oven to 230 degrees C.
Spread the cooked apples on a greased pan and pour the flour mixture over it.
Bake for 20-25 minutes.





The final product will not be something that you can slice as a cake . It will be crumbly, which is why the name.
Serve as warm dessert with some fruits.

You are about to read some great treats in Anu 's, Deep 's, Dhivi 's, Mads', Mridhu 's, Nags' and Siri 's blogs. Stay tuned. I bet my last penny that they are bringing in mind blowing dessert recipes.

6 comments:

  1. I have already seen DK's and Nags recipes for this edition of FSB. What a mindblowing theme and choice of secret ingredients.

    Thanks for sharing a detailed post on using barley flour in baking. I am sure it tastes yumm.

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  2. I am 'crumble'-ing to pieces looking at this. Never imagined you could bake with barley. Thanks for this one Lataji!

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  3. Apple crumble is one of my favorites - I made it one time for another event and since then have made it repeatedly many times. Next time around, I'm going to try your recipe with barley and other flours! looks so comforting and I'm sure it tasted great right out of the oven!

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  4. Apple crumble always had me crumbling! This one couldn't get any better. Barley is a favourite grain and barley flour instead of regular all purpose flour only tempts me to make this more.

    All that trivia is very interestingly put together; very informative since I'm always on the quest to bake healthy.

    I'M MAKING THIS VERY SOON!!

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  5. The pics look remarkably stunning with clever touches . Yummee!!

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  6. Wow!!! Lataji, very tempting and healthy!!! Tried ur Chocolate pound cake before leaving to chennai, came out great!!!!! Kudos to FSB, u guys are giving us a lot of variations to the same recipe!!!! Hats off to ur Experimenting(read adventurous) spirit!!!!!

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Hello,
Welcome and thank you for taking time to drop by.
I appreciate your valuable comments and tips.
I sincerely hope to improve with them.
Hope we shall interact often.
Thanks once again,
Lata Raja.