Plum Crumble (Gluten free)

There is something about our chilly fall weather that begs for warm, fruity desserts.  I had some leftover plums, and was yearning for a warm, fragrant, sweet plum crumble, full of oats, almonds and walnuts.  Look Ma!  No gluten!  I don't normally shun gluten, but I'm on an experiment right now, and am avoiding flour.  So far, no worthy results, but I'll continue for a while.

This luscious yet wholesome dessert takes about fifteen minutes to prepare, bakes in an hour at 350 F, should cool at least twenty minutes, and serves four. 

I could have used a few more plums, so I added a few blueberries too.

Hands work best for blending butter and oil.

20 plums

scattering of other fruit (optional)

½ cup old fashioned oat flakes

¼ cup raw organic palm sugar or jaggery powder

¼ cup almonds

¼ cup walnuts

1/8 cup coconut milk powder

½ teaspoon cinnamon powder

¼ teaspoon coarse salt

1 tablespoon cold butter

1/8 cup avocado oil 

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Before the blueberries filled the spaces.

Pit and cut the plums into bite size pieces.  Pour into a baking dish.  (I used a pie plate, but would have preferred a smaller, deeper dish.) My pie plate needed a squidge more fruit, so I sprinkled a few blueberries into the fruit, but any other temperate climate fruit or berry will do, if you need to fill up your plate. Fetch a spoonful of raw sugar from the quarter cup, and sprinkle it over the plums.  Set aside.

In a medium size bowl, toss in the oat flakes and rest of the sugar.   Buzz the almonds in a blender until they are almost all powdered up.  Leave some almond bits.  Add to the oats.  Buzz the walnuts for less time than the almonds.  Some powder is fine, but mostly you want small bits.  Add to the oat mix.  Add the coconut, cinnamon and salt to the oat mix.

Add the butter and oil and mix with your hands until the butter and oil are well distributed and the mix gets clumpy when squeezed.  Sprinkle over the fruit. 

Blend till mix clumps a bit when squeezed.

I might confess here that I actually made twice the amount of topping necessary, and I tucked the extra half in the freezer for in case I want to make an apple crumble or yet another plum crumble, sometime soon, when I'm all by myself, and no one can stop me from eating the whole thing...  Anyway, I've halved the topping ingredients here, to how much I really made today.

Bake for an hour.  The house will smell fabulous.  Serve with vanilla ice cream if you’re eating this for dessert, or warm it up and then pour some milk over it if you are grabbing it for breakfast.  Oh, what a happy start to your day!

Really, no one has any business eating this much, anyway.  This is a full pie plate's worth!