The cooler weather is upon us and I got to have play at work. Quince is only available in the cooler months so I thought I would try a using it in a crumble. My previous encounters with quince has mainly been quince paste with cheese. Maybe next year I will have a go at making some as I have a recipe in either Maggie Beer’s cookbooks or Stephanie Alexander’s book.

I have never cooked quince before so after a bit of research I found bizzylizzysgoodthings.com with a recipe for slow cooked quinces.

I also had an inkling to make some salted caramel icecream to go with the crumbles, so a bit more research and I found a recipe on David Lebovitz’ website, davidlebovitz.com.

Time to get cooking. The quince was easy and took about three hours to cook. Next time I think I would use a little more water as the syrup became very thick, but I got the fruit to a beautiful deep red colour.

Quince ready to cook
Quince ready to cook

 

Cooked Quince
Cooked Quince

I poached the pears simply in a little sugar syrup until cooked but still firm. The pears were Williams which were firm and great for cooking. I then diced the pears and quince, mixed them together, divided the mix in to ramekins with some syrup. I added the pear liquid to the thick quince syrup and this loosened it up nicely.

In our family our crumble topping always has rolled oats. I cream butter and brown sugar together, mix in some flour and then the rolled oats. For this crumble topping I also lightly toasted some hazelnuts, removed the skin and broke them up a little. I then added the nuts to the crumble mix and sprinkled the mixture over the fruit.

The crumble topping is

100g Unsalted butter

100g Brown sugar

80g plain flour

80g rolled oats (normal rolled oats not quick, or cut)

30g hazelnuts (or to taste)

Quince and pear crumbles ready for the oven.
Quince and pear crumbles ready for the oven.

To reheat them I preheated a fan forced oven to 180C and cooked them for about 20 minutes until they were hot.

For the icecream I just followed the recipe on David Lebovitz’s site.

The ice cream and the crumble together were a taste sensation!!

Looks like I will be preserving some quince this week ahead of using them for an upcoming wine dinner in September. Our GM loved the crumble and the salted caramel ice cream so much that she really wanted to use it for one of the wine dinners. The next wine dinner was already sorted so we get to do the crumble on the one after.

Thanks for dropping by!!