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A nice, easy to make, crumble that’s not only glutenfree but also dairyfree. Traditionally an English crumble is made from wheat flour, white sugar and butter. For this recipe I changed that to flour from oats, coconut flower sugar and coconut oil.

Structure of the crumble

Flour made from oats chances the structure of the crumble, as does the coconut flower sugar, as does the coconut oil. Therefor I added rolled, cut oats for extra texture: that makes this crumble a sort of apple crisp.

Difference crisp and crumble

An apple crisp is very similar to a crumble. It’s an American version, and the main difference is that a crisp is made with oats and often nuts and seeds. An authentic English crumble is never made with oats.

The number of glutenfree grains I still eat is limited: oatmeal is one of them. Adding other pseudograins didn’t work well. I tried teff and buckweat, those pseudograins both make soft flours. And that causes a crumble to be not so crumbly. After two failures (great taste, but not the texture I was looking for), combining oat flour with cut oats worked out really well!

Are oats gluten free?

All oats are naturally gluten free but they are often harvested and processed near wheat or other grains with gluten. So oats can be cross contaminated. In the EU oats are only guaranteed gluten free when the package is labelled gluten free.

Kinds of oatmeal

Even in Dutch it’s sometimes hard to explain what kind of oats I’m referring to. And I am a bit worried I’m having even a harder time in English…

In this recipe I use 2/3 ground oats: flour. And for 1/3 I use rolled oats that have been cut. Of course you can grind rolled oats yourself as well. But don’t grind to much: leave a bit of crunch in them. Don’t use steel oats or the whole grain.