This idea is from Bakerella--do you know that site? Every day or two, a scrumptious-looking cake or cookie recipe goes up. Sadly, the recipes there aren't anything we can eat here at chezTECH, because our diets are restricted--no saturated fat, lower calorie, more fruit and nuts, less cake, blah blah--the usual thing when you go in for a check-up, only to have the doctor scare the bejabbers out of you.
Nevertheless, Bakerella's recipe for peach crumble looked so good and sounded so easy, that I was determined to tweak the recipe so we could eat it here. The original recipe called for a box of yellow cake mix, a stick of butter, and a full cup of brown sugar. That's way out of our league, so the new recipe markedly reduces the cake mix, eliminates the butter and brown sugar and adds oatmeal. Still, the tweaked recipe is recognizable as a yummy crumble, makes up as easy as the original, and as a plus, kids'll eat it too.
To make, you need:
- round or square glass baking pan somewhere between 8 and 10 inches
- 1 15 oz can of peaches in juice
- 1/3 cup cake mix--any kind of vanilla cake mix seems to work: after many tries, I've settled on Dr. Oeker's organic vanilla cake mix
- 1/3 cup regular (long-cooking) oatmeal
- 1 1/2 tablespoons cooking oil--we use canola around here
- 1/3 cup chopped pecans
Sprinkle the cake mix evenly over the peaches, then the oatmeal on top of that. Drizzle the oil as evenly as you can. There will be large areas where there is no oil, but that's OK. Take a table knife and plunge it through the topping, then twirl it around in place, thus making a little "well" where the liquid can bubble up through the dry ingredients while baking. Make about 6 or 8 of these wells, mostly in the middle of the pan. Top with the pecans, spread evenly. Being amazingly lazy, I don't even wait until the oven has finished preheating, but stick the crumble right in after assembling. Bake for 40 minutes. Yield: 4 servings
Eat hot or cold.
Good for breakfast.
The doctor won't yell at you.
--TK