Website: Smitten Kitchen

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumble

Page: smittenkitchen.com/2007/05/crumbling-crisp-convictions/

| Course Type: Desserts

(4 reviews)

View photos (3)

Tags: summer rhubarb Crumble strawberries berries spring keeper

Recipe Review

4th May 2011

friederike from Berlin,

Very delicious, and very quick to make!
The crumble was very delicious and crisp, the strawberries and rhubarb were nicely done, but just quite a bit too sour. Use less lemon juice, and unless you use really sweet strawberries I would add one or two extra tablespoons of sugar. I accidentally added the pinch of salt to the crumble instead of the fruit, I don't think that mattered.

I would have thought that the rhubarb needed to be cooked longer than those delicate berries, but that wasn't the case at all - nor does the Apple Rhubarb Crumble from Marie Claire, coming to think of it. And the choice of fruit really makes a difference, Deb's strawberry-rhubarb crumble really screams Summer!, while the Marie Claire apple version is a lot less boastful about it...

For those Europeans among you: we used 500g strawberries, minus the wrotten ones, and this turned out fine.

Edited 28 April 2014:
We used 430 g rhubarb and 470 g brilliantly sweet strawberries (according to some unit conversion website the recipe calls for 226 g rhubarb and 680 g strawberries). We really liked this proportion of fruit, but because we used more rhubarb than called for, we should have used more sugar also, or less lemon juice.

The crumble also tasted just a bit weird. I think it might have been either the baking powder, or the corn starch, or both. Next time I'll omit the baking powder entirely (why would you need it in the first place?), and possibly reduce the cornstarch to 1 tbsp, or even none (you don't really need that either).

Edited 3 May 2014:
We made this crumble again today to test our assumptions (suffering in the name of science). We did as I suggested in my last edit, omitting the baking powder entirely and using only 1 tbsp of cornstarch. Furthermore, we used the juice of just a quarter lemon, the same amount of sugar, and slightly less fruit (380 g rhubarb and 420 g strawberries, same proportion as last time). The result was a lot better, though there is something to say for the cornstarch - we ended up with a strawberry soup. So keep the cornstarch in there. Sourness and sweetness were nicely balanced, though only if you serve it with ice cream; if you don't, I'd add a little more sugar.

Edited 11 May 2016:
It's that time of the year again, isn't it? So, this time: No baking powder in the crumble, in the filling no salt, 1 tbsp cornstarch, about 480 g rhubarb, 400 g strawberries, not all juice a lemon (half a lemon? 3/4?), and about 175 g sugar - perfection! Served with vanilla ice cream; could probably have a little (tiny bit!) extra sugar without ice cream.