I’m very flighty and changeable with my choice of breakfast foods. I was brought up believing breakfast was the most important meal of the day and one should always break your fast with something decent and sustaining for the day.  However, the most enduring memories I have of my childhood breakfasts are of some kind of packet cereal and milk or Vegemite on toast, all served with a cup of tea (of course).  My older brother is still a big believer in the power of Weet-Bix to get you through the day and when he comes to stay at my place, he’ll buy a large economy pack of Weet-Bix, which usually ends up getting chucked out when he leaves, because nobody else eats it.  As an adult, I’ve never really been a fan of boxed cereals, although I’ll occasionally go the Vegemite on toast brekkie and the morning cup of tea (or two or three) has remained a constant in my personal breakfast of champions.

My absolute favorite type of breakfast food is leftovers from the night before: Dal on toast, tabouli with some kind of dip and flat bread or a simple fried rice with egg are up there in my favorite top ten breakfast foods. Which brings me to this breakfast crumble from Deb Perelman, it’s designed to be eaten as leftovers with yogurt during the week, so fits perfectly with my ‘leftovers for breakfast’ ethos. It uses less sugar than a usual desert crumble, reminding me of the hippy fruit crumbles from my childhood and makes an excellent mid-week, slightly healthier desert. It’s also a great way to use up excess stone fruit, I had a whole heap of new season peaches I bought in a fit of excitement last week and baking them up in this crumble saved them from certain death rotting at the bottom of my fridge.

I’ve been experimenting with unrefined sugars like rapadura in baking. This hasn’t always been completely successful because unrefined sugars like rapadura and panela tend to have less liquid, don’t seem to caramelize in the same way refined sugars do and can make cakes and cookies quite a bit drier. They are perfect in crumbles though and seem to give them a bit of extra crunch, along with an extra nutritional boost, making this crumble, despite the added sugar, a reasonably healthy breakfast choice. A true breakfast of champions.

Summer stone fruit crumble

Adapted from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook – Deb Perelman

For the fruit

• 600 grams of summer stone fruit (if you have some spare strawberries or other berries put  them in too)
• 2 tablespoons unrefined sugar (rapadura, panela or coconut sugar)
• 1 tablespoon of plain flour
• Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Crumble

• Topping 55 grams butter (substitute half or full amount with olive oil)
• 65 grams natural sugar unrefined sugar
• 40 grams rolled oats
• 65 grams of plain flour ( or a mixture of wholemeal and plain flour)
• Good pinch of salt
• 2 tablespoons of chopped or sliced almonds
• Plain yogurt to serve

1. Pre-heat oven to 200C/ 180C fanforced.
2. Take stones out of fruit and cut into quarters or slices (depending on size of fruit) Arrange in a layer in a shallow gratin dish or pie plate. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar and pinch of nutmeg through fruit.
3. Melt butter in small saucepan, stir in sugar, then the oats followed by the flour, salt and almonds.
4. Spread crumble over fruit and bake for about 30 minutes. Eat warm or chilled with plain yogurt.