Jumbleberry Crumble — The Kitchen Does What It Does

Sven the Second is two years old now and the most enthusiastic dog Duluth has ever produced. He cannot replace the first Sven. He does not need to. He is doing his own job — the puppy job, the joyful job, the job of taking the kitchen seriously and the squirrels in the yard much more seriously than that. He is the right dog for this period of the kitchen's life. Jakob got engaged. To a woman named Claire. They are both teachers. Jakob is twenty-eight. The wedding is in spring. I will bake the cake. The princess cake. The sacred cake. The cake of every Johansson wedding since I made it for my own wedding to Paul in 1988. I am sixty-something and I am still baking the cake. I will bake the cake at every Johansson wedding for as long as the hands work. Lena moved to Bozeman, Montana. She is a wildlife biologist now. She sends photos of bears. The photos are on the fridge. I worry. I do not say. The worry is the standard grandmotherly worry — bears, weather, men, distance. Lena is fine. Lena has always been fine. Lena is the most self-sufficient grandchild I have, and the most distant, and the one I worry about specifically because of both of those things. I cooked Hot cross buns this week. Yeasted sweet buns with currants and citron, scored with a cross, glazed after baking. Easter morning. The smell wakes the house up. Thursday at Damiano. I brought a tray of pepparkakor — the second batch from the Christmas freezer, brought back to crispness in a low oven. They were eaten in fifteen minutes. The cookies are not the soup. The cookies are the extra. The extra is the message: you are worth the effort of cookies. Most of the world does not give the people who come to Damiano the message that they are worth the effort of cookies. The cookies are doing political work. I dreamed about Paul last night. The dream was specific: we were at the lake, in the canoe, fishing for trout. He was teaching me the right way to cast (he was always trying to teach me; I never quite got the rhythm; I caught fish anyway, by accident, with embarrassing regularity). In the dream he was patient and present and entirely himself. I woke up at 4 AM. I made coffee. I sat in the kitchen. The dream was a visit. I have learned to receive the visits without reaching for them. They come when they come. It is enough. It has to be. And on a morning like this, with the lake doing what the lake does and the dog at my feet and the bread on the counter and the kitchen warm enough to live in, it is. The seasons in Duluth are unsubtle. The winter is long and white and dark. The spring is reluctant. The summer is glorious and brief. The fall is brilliant and quick. The unsubtlety is a kind of honesty. The seasons do not pretend to be other than what they are. They give you what they give you. They take what they take. The kitchen, in response, does what it does — soup in winter, salads in summer, pies in fall, bread always. It is enough.

The hot cross buns were for Easter morning, but the oven was still warm by afternoon and the mood for baking had not finished with me yet. A crumble is what happens when the kitchen has already done its serious work and wants to do something generous and unhurried — something that uses whatever the freezer offers and asks almost nothing in return. I made this with the last of the summer’s frozen berries, the ones I had been saving without quite knowing what for, and it turned out that what they were for was this particular Thursday, this particular quiet, the dog at my feet and Paul still faintly present from the dream.

Jumbleberry Crumble

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 55 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• Fruit Filling
• 2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
• 1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
• 1 cup fresh or frozen blackberries
• 1/2 cup fresh or frozen strawberries, halved
• 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• Crumble Topping
• 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
• 6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Lightly butter a 9-inch square or equivalent baking dish and set it aside.
2. Make the filling. Combine all the berries in a large bowl. Sprinkle over the sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, and vanilla extract. Toss gently until the berries are evenly coated, then pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish and spread into an even layer.
3. Make the crumble topping. In a separate bowl, stir together the oats, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Scatter the cold butter cubes over the top and use your fingertips to rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse, clumpy crumbs with some pea-sized pieces of butter remaining. Do not overwork it — the uneven texture is what gives the crumble its character.
4. Assemble and bake. Scatter the crumble topping evenly over the berry filling. Bake for 35–40 minutes, until the topping is golden brown and the berry juices are bubbling up around the edges.
5. Rest before serving. Allow the crumble to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving. This lets the filling set slightly so it doesn’t run. Serve warm, with a spoonful of vanilla ice cream or a pour of cold cream if you like.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 340 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 12g | Carbs: 56g | Fiber: 5g | Sodium: 105mg