Deliciously scrummy gluten-free rhubarb crumble recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why is my rhubarb crumble soggy? ›

- There's to much moisture in your fruit. Try mixing a little corn flour into the rhubarb before baking. - Your crumble has cooked to quickly. Try turning down the temperature and baking your crumble for longer.

You can play around with substitutions—flour, arrowroot, potato starch, and tapioca can all be used to the same effect. Some recipes contain a mix of thickeners, which will work together just fine. A proper crisp topping combines oats, flour, butter, and brown sugar—it's the perfect balance of rich, sweet, and hearty.

Toss 2 pounds chopped rhubarb, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon orange zest and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a 8-by-8-inch glass or ceramic baking dish. Scatter the crumble on top and bake in a preheated 375 degrees F oven until golden and bubbly, 45 minutes.

Tips for making the perfect crumble

Mark Bowerman says: "Rub the butter in fairly quickly, and not too perfectly – a fine, dusty texture at this stage spoils the fun. Use a shallowish dish if you've got a wet fruit mixture, otherwise the crumble will start to dissolve before it's baked. Custard. Yum."

By freezing your topping, it makes it harden just slightly and that means the texture will be nice and crispy when it's cooked.”

When added to cake, cookie, pie filling and shortbread recipes, cornstarch helps create a crumbly and tender dessert-like texture. Commercially, cornstarch is often used as an anti-caking agent.

If you use more butter than the recipe calls for, the crumb topping will be melted and greasy. If you don't use enough butter it will be dry and floury.

Butter, which encourages both browning and crispness, is the magic ingredient in getting your topping just right, so follow the recipe instructions. But if you feel your topping is still too dry and crumbly, (even for a crumble) add a bit more melted butter, a tablespoon at a time.

Method. Put the rhubarb into a saucepan with the orange zest, juice, sugar and 2 tbsp water. Bring to the boil then simmer for 8 mins until the rhubarb is cooked but still holds its shape.

Cut away and discard any tough, woody, or bruised parts of the stalks. Wash the stalks thoroughly and scrub with a vegetable brush. You don't need to peel peak-season rhubarb, but by midsummer, the stalks tend to be tough and fibrous. You might need to peel them to make them tastier.

How do you get moisture out of rhubarb? ›

Macerate Your Rhubarb With Sugar To Draw Out Excess Liquid

Mixing fruit with sugar draws out moisture through the process of osmosis, which happens when water naturally balances out by migrating from the cells in your fruit to the dissolved sugar molecules on the surface, the same way it does with salt.

Rhubarb pie fillings are often soft and runny. The rhubarb contains so much water, you either have to add too much thickener or coax the rhubarb to release its liquid before thickening it.

Push the crown, if it is hard then your rhubarb is fine, if it is spongy then it could be poor drainage.