Volunteering and Apple Crumble

Today I visited Dorich House, which is a house owned by the University I work for, preserved as a museum all about the sculptures of Dora Gordine and the collection of her husband Richard Hare (hence Dorich as the name for the house). The house itself was absolutely beautiful, from the outside it looks like a little castle set on the outskirts of Richmond Park high on a hill overlooking the surrounding area. Inside it was preserved exactly as it would have looked in 1938 when it was built. I loved the whole 1930's Art Deco style of the place and the fantastic history behind Dora's sculptures and the Russian artefacts collected by Richard. The house also acted as Dora's studio and gallery and although it was designed in the modernist style it was also created with the practical aspect in mind of display her works and lighting her studio. But aside from just purely historical  interest on my part (being a history graduate and all) there was a practical reason for my visit as I'm going to be starting volunteering on a committee working on a new exhibition for the house. All very exciting as it helps me get one step closer to getting on my masters course and qualifying to become an education officer in museums.

But that's all slightly off topic so let's get back on topic with my next recipe. Recently my friend moved into her new flat and to celebrate she invited me and a few other friends over for dinner. We each took a course, nachos, salsa, sour cream and guacamole for starters, vegetarian fajitas for main (two of my friends are veggies so i had to suck up my meat eating tendancies for one night) and of course I took dessert and made these delicious apple crumble bars which, as you can see, got thoroughly enjoyed before I had a chance to really take a good picture!

As you can see from the picture this went down pretty well. I'll admit that I overcooked it a little, the crumble on top didn't go as golden as I expect so I left it in a little too long. I also didn't realise that they would want to reheat it, if I'd known that then I would have undercooked it and then given it an extre 5 minutes when i got there. Still it was very tasty and good both as a dessert and as a lunch time snack the next day when I was volunteering. In fact it got more moist the next day so was a little better. The misture sounds like a lot but it's definitely enough to fill a 9x13 pan. I halfed it for a smaller pan and still needed to make more crumble. If you're going to have it warm as a dessert I would suggest serving it with some vanilla ice cream or custard!

Apple Crumble Bars

Ingredients
16oz flour
1/2 tsp salt
12oz sugar
4oz brown sugar and 1tbsp extra
12oz butter, softened
4-5 apples cored, peeled and diced
1/2 a lemon
1tsp cinnamon
1/2tsp nutmeg

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180c and prepare a 9x13 baking pan.
2. Squirt the peeled and diced apples with the juice of half a lemon and set aside.
3. Combine the flour and sugars in a bowl then rub the butter into dry ingredients to make moist crumbs
4. Mix 100g of the crumb mixture with the apples andf add the cinnamon, 1 tbsp of brown sugar and nutmeg and set aside.
5. Press half the crumb mixture into the bottom of the pan and bake for 10 minutes
6. Remove the crust from the oven, pour the apple mixture on top and top with the last of the crumbs. Bake for another 45 minutes or until the tio is golden brown, cut into bars after they have completely cooled (or just dig in with a spoon while still hot as my friends did!)