Apple and Blackberry Crumble

This turned out surprisingly well considering I'm pretty rubbish at baking. It came from a newspaper clipping I thieved from a cafe so it's heritage was probably one of the weekend papers.

Filling:
8 large apples (mix of golden delicious and granny smith) - peeled, cored and roughly chopped into wedges
150g frozen blackberries (thawed) or other berries
1 vanilla bean
300g sugar
100m water
1 lemon zest

Crumble topping:
100g plain flour (give or take - not sure exactly how much)
100 to 120g of cold butter diced
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
100g rolled oats
50g almond meal
100g brown or demerara sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
100g nuts (almond slithers or macadamia or walnuts or pecans ...)

Put the sugar, water, lemon zest and vanilla bean seeds into a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil then turn down and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the apples and cook for 10-15 minutes until soft on a low to medium heat. Strain away the liquid and then add to the bottom of a 25cm round cake tin with the blackberries. Pack it down a little.

Rub the flour and butter together in your finger tips to work the mixture until it forms a lumpy consistency. Don't overwork or it won't be crunchy. Add the cinnamon, rolled oats, almond meal, brown sugar, baking powder and nuts. Mix together until it forms clumps. Put this mixture
on top of the apple blackberry mixture in the tin.

Place into a pre-heated oven at 220C (200C if fan forced) for 20-25 minutes until golden on top.

Some variants I found when doing a bit of poking around on the interweb:

• Rhubarb & apple crumble: Omit the cinnamon. Replace the rolled oats with 35g (1/2 cup) shredded coconut. Reduce the apples to 2 (about 210g each). Add 1 bunch (about 550g) rhubarb, leaves discarded, ends trimmed, washed and cut into 5cm lengths, with the apples in step 3. Replace the lemon juice with 1 tbs fresh orange juice.

• Peach & walnut crumble: Replace the ground cinnamon with ground nutmeg. Replace the rolled oats with 55g (1/2 cup) good-quality walnut halves, roughly chopped. Replace the apples with 6 (about 1kg) freestone peaches. Cut a small cross into the base of each peach and place in a large heatproof bowl. Cover with boiling water and set aside for 5 minutes. Remove the peaches from the water and use a small sharp knife to peel and discard the skin. Cut the peaches in half, remove the stones and cut each piece in half lengthways. Place the peach quarters, cut-side up, in the greased dish. Omit the lemon juice.