RECIPE | APRICOT CRUMBLE SQUARES

One of the old ladies my mum works for is always gifting her the most random things! She's the sweetest, most thoughtful lady. This week was a punnet of fresh apricots so as it's not usually a fruit we'd buy, we thought we might as well combine it with this weekends bake. A little flick through the cookbooks and we found a recipe for apricot crumble squares!

Serves: 16 squares (but I only got 12 out of mine - i'll explain later!!)

Ingredients:
175g butter, softened
200g golden caster sugar
3 large eggs
175g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
2-3tbsp milk
8 fresh apricots quartered (or canned in natural juice)

icing sugar for dusting

For the topping:
175g plain flour
149g light muscovado sugar
140g butter, softened
1tsp ground cinnamon
1/2tsp salt

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 160ºc
• Butter a shallow 22cm square cake tin
• Put all the topping ingredients in a food processor with 1/2 tsp salt. Blend to make a sticky crumble
• Using an electric hand whisk, blend the cake ingredients, except milk and apricots
• Gradually add enough milk to make a creamy mixture that drops from the spoon
• Spread in the tin and scatter with apricots
• Top with the crumble and press down
• Bake for 45-50 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean
• Cool in a tin and cut into squares
• Dust with icing sugar

I didn't have a 22cm square tin so using a rectangular tin and using baking beans and foil to make it a bit smaller. I did manage to make it too small which meant that the "squares" were a bit too big! 

They're more of a pudding (with creams obvs) than a tea-time cake.

I think they turned out really well though and taste really good! The crumble tastes a bit like the one I made for the mince pies last year. 

Give it a go and let me know what you think of the recipe in the comments below.