Today, I baked an oatmeal crumble topping because I've been craving it lately. I did quite a bit of research on what ingredients were in it (besides oatmeal) and what process I had to do to complete the recipe. I was looking for a recipe that would tell me how to bake the topping without first putting it on top of a fruit pie. Most of the recipes in both recipe websites and cookbooks listed the same basic ingredients: rolled oats (quick or traditional), brown sugar, flour, and butter (or margarine). I wanted to make the topping so that I could have it on hand to sprinkle over microwaved fruit. This craving started when I bought and tried Dole's Fruit Crisps (peach). The package contains two individual servings (plastic cups) of glazed fruit with separate topping containers. Each fruit cup is covered with a plastic sheet that is glued around the edges so that it doesn't spill all over the place (typical packaging by manufacturers). Each topping container is hard plastic and covered with foil (also glued around the edges). The topping container serves as a lid when turned upside-down.
The topping container is made of a clear, hard plastic. Naturally, this means I will use it as a lid. I simply cannot throw it away when I can use it for something else. Below is a picture of the empty fruit cup, the topping lid (also empty), and a piece of foil (not the original packaging foil you see in the above picture).
By itself, the topping lid is a bit too loose for the empty fruit cup, but with a sheet of foil on it, it's a nice fit. I could probably just put a strip of foil around the inside edge of the topping lid, and it would still fit well on the container. If I just want to keep a lid on the container but the lid doesn't need to fit securely on it, I could omit the foil.
Below is the recipe with my comments in the directions because I added comments before, during, and after baking the topping.
Oatmeal Crumble Topping
Ingredients: [Exact measurements were taken from the Dehydrator bible]
½ C.
quick-cooking rolled oats
½
C. packed brown sugar
¼ C.
all-purpose flour
¼
tsp. ground cinnamon
¼
C. cold butter, cut into pieces
Process: Preheat
oven to 375°F
In a bowl, combine oats, brown sugar,
flour, and cinnamon. With clean hands, mix
the ingredients together (yes, mix it up with your hands). Pour the topping mixture into a pie pan (aluminum or
glass, I used a large aluminum pie pan) and spread out the mixture so that it
covers the bottom of the pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. After
those first 10 minutes, pull pan out of oven and toss the mixture around. Put
the pan back in the oven and bake for another 10 minutes. Pull pan from oven
and let the topping cool for about 10 minutes before using it. Store in an
airtight container in the refrigerator. The mixture makes about one and a half cups baked.
 |
| My homemade oatmeal crumble topping added to a Dole Peach Fruit cup |
Just before microwaving the Dole Fruit cup, I add a little bit of cinnamon-sugar and an even smaller amount of sea salt (about 2 shakes from the salt shaker). I've noticed that without the extras, the peach flavor is a bit on the bland side for me. I stir the cinnamon-sugar and salt into the fruit mix and put the fruit cup in the microwave for about 25 seconds on high (my microwave oven is a 1300-watt one). Dole's instructions for heating the fruit cup is 20-30 seconds. Then, I add my oatmeal crumble topping.
Just so you know, everything was absolutely delicious! I put the oatmeal crumble topping in a 2-cup plastic container (a generic version of Ziploc's containers with screw-top lids) and put it in the refrigerator. The next time I want a sweet, crunchy topping on some fruit, I will have it on hand. Since making this topping, I've put glazed fruit on my shopping list.
No comments:
Post a Comment