Makes 30

Ingredients:

Dough:

• 125g cup butter
• 15ml tbsp oil
• ¾ cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 540g self raising flour

Filling:

• 9 big apples
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 stick cinnamon
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup raisins/dried cranberries (optional)

Steps:

In a bowl, cream the butter, oil and sugar together until pale in color. Whisk the 2 eggs and add it along with the vanilla essence to the butter and sugar mix. Sift the flour into this just until it comes together to form a ball, if the dough has come together and there is still flour left,  you don’t need to add it. The dough should be soft. Cut a quarter of the dough, roll it in a ball and wrap it in cling wrap and place in the freezer.

With the rest of the dough, make small balls with them and then press each ball into a muffin tray. It should be around ½ cm in thickness.

Peel and cut up the apples into small quarters

Add ¼ cup sugar to a pot, place on a low heat and caramelize just until the sugar turns brown, make sure it doesn’t go too dark. Add the apples to the pot and stir into the caramelized sugar, then add the remaining sugar, cinnamon, cinnamon stick, lemon juice and water.

 If you want to add raisins or dried cranberries, add it in at this stage. Let everything simmer on a low heat until the apples are completely soft & cooked down and the liquid is a jam like consistency. Let it cool.

Once cooled, spoon the apple mixture in the pastry cups.  Take the ball of dough that you set aside out of the freezer and grate it over the apple filling as the crumble top.

Put it in a preheated oven of 190 degrees for 18-20 minutes.

Take it out, let it cool on a wire rack. Once they have cooled dust with icing sugar.