Just finished lunch, the kids had a plum each as part of dessert and I noticed that they were on the turn and I still had most of the punnet of plums left. My mum suggested making a plum crumble. Good idea I thought, so that's what I did.

Crumbles are a great way to use up any fruit that may be on its way out. So to save throwing them away you can give them one last chance at being eaten. So, making crumbles will save you money!

Ingredients to make the plum crumble

• 21 oz (600g) of plums, chopped into small chunks and stoned
• 1 1/4 oz (35g)light brown muscovado sugar
• teaspoon of cinnamon
• teaspoon of plain flour

Ingredients to make the plum crumble topping

• 6 3/4 oz (190g)plain flour
• 4 oz (115g) butter
• 4 oz (115g)brown muscovado sugar

How top make the plum crumble

Preheat the oven to 180C (convection) or 170 for fan.

Tip the chopped plums in to a suitable baking dish, the one I used is square. Add the sugar plus teaspoon of flour and cinnamon. Mix these ingredients in with a spoon.

In a mixing bowl chop your butter into cubes, add the flour. Pick up some using your fingers gently rubbing your thumb and first two fingers together so that it starts to form bread crumbs. Dont press too hard otherwise you'll fuse the butter together into a big blob. Keep going until you have what looks like a bowl of breadcrumbs, then add the sugar and quickly repeat the mixing process to integrate the sugar.

Once it's ready spread over the top of the fruit in the baking dish, doesn't need to be neat just so long as it covers the plums sufficiently.

Bake the crumble in the oven for between 30-45 minutes until the top is brown and the plum mixture is bubbling. Please pay attention that I've left a large window here for baking times as it will vary considerably from crumble to crumble. Always check regularly to give you an idea on how it's going.

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