Soft baked apples under a crunchy topping of flour, butter and cane sugar, with no oats and no spice unless you want them. The French take on a British dessert, made with firm Canadian apples and demerara sugar.
A crumble is the quickest French dessert for a bag of Canadian apples. It takes twenty minutes to put together, and the oven does the rest.
What is a French apple crumble?
Crumble came to France from Britain and is now a standard family dessert, on bistro menus and in home kitchens. The French version is simple: apples, then a topping of roughly three parts flour to two of butter and two of sugar, rubbed together with your fingers. No oats, usually no cinnamon. It is served warm, with a spoon of something cold and tangy.
Which sugar and which apples?
The sugar. French recipes use cassonade, a coarse golden cane sugar that stays crunchy. In Quebec, cassonade means soft brown sugar, which melts into the topping. Use demerara or turbinado sugar for the French crunch.
The apples. McIntosh, the classic Canadian apple, falls apart on its own. A firm apple keeps its shape; one McIntosh in the mix gives you a little sauce around the pieces.
The cream. In France the spoonful on top is crème fraîche. Here, 14% sour cream does the same job: cold, thick and tangy, and sold in every supermarket.
Making it in Canada
The 3 French ingredients, and what to buy for them in Canada.
Cassonade→Demerara or turbinado sugar
Coarse golden cane sugar stays crunchy in the oven, like French cassonade. Soft brown sugar, which Quebec calls cassonade, melts and makes the topping chewy.
🛒 Redpath Demerara Style (1 kg) at Walmart and Metro. Lantic Demerara (1 kg) on Voilà; in the West the same sugar is sold as Rogers Demerara (Real Canadian Superstore).
Pommes Golden ou Reinette→Cortland, Golden Delicious or Honeycrisp
You want apples that soften but keep their shape. Add one McIntosh if you like a little sauce between the pieces; on its own it turns to mush.
Cold and tangy, it cuts the sweetness of a hot crumble the same way, and it is in every dairy case. If you see Liberté 40% crème fraîche, that is the French product, if you want it.
🛒 Great Value 14% (Walmart), Compliments 14% (Sobeys, Voilà) or Sealtest 14%.
Good to know: Look for coarse demerara or turbinado sugar next to the brown sugar in the baking aisle; Redpath Demerara Style is the easiest to find. If you only have brown sugar, the crumble still works; it is just softer on top.
Ready to cook?
Apple Crumble
Crumble aux pommes
Soft baked apples under a crunchy topping of flour, butter and cane sugar, with no oats and no spice unless you want them. The French take on a British dessert, made with firm Canadian apples and demerara sugar.
Prep time
20 min
Cook time
45 min
Resting time
10 min
Total time
1 hr 15 min
Servings
6
Ingredients
Original recipe: 6 servings.
Instructions
Heat the oven. Heat the oven to 190°C (375°F). Butter a 20 × 20 cm (8-inch square) baking dish or a 23 cm (9-inch) pie dish.
Cook the apples briefly. Melt 15 g butter in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the apples and 2 tbsp sugar and cook 5 minutes, stirring, until the edges just soften. This stops them releasing a pool of juice under the topping.
Make the topping. In a bowl, mix the flour, demerara sugar, salt and cinnamon (if using). Add the cold butter and rub it in with your fingertips until it looks like coarse, uneven crumbs with some larger lumps.
Assemble. Spread the apples in the dish with their juices. Scatter the topping loosely over them, right to the edges. Don't press it down.
Bake. Bake 35–40 minutes, until the topping is deep golden and the juices bubble up at the edges.
Rest and serve. Let it sit 10 minutes before serving, warm, with 14% sour cream or crème fraîche, cold whipping cream or vanilla ice cream.
Equipment
Etekcity digital kitchen scale: The topping works on equal weights of flour, butter and sugar, and a scale gets the crunch right every time.
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Notes
Make the topping ahead and keep it in the freezer in a bag; scatter it over the apples straight from frozen and add 5 minutes to the bake.
Leftovers keep 3 days in the fridge. Reheat in the oven, not the microwave, to bring back the crunch.
If the top browns before the juices bubble, cover it loosely with foil for the last 10 minutes.
Late-season apples can be very juicy. If yours are, stir 1 tsp cornstarch into the 2 tbsp sugar before cooking them.
Course: Desserts · Cuisine: French · Adapted for Canadian kitchens
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For a quiche or a hot sauce, use 35% whipping cream; for a cold dollop or a dip, 14% sour cream. Liberté's 40% crème fraîche is the real thing when your store has it, and you can make your own overnight.
