The downside of desserts usually happens in an undisclosed area of our body. However, making a dessert with layers of antioxidants can help balance out the wrath of free radicals. Topping this dish is butter-less and glutenless crumble made of oats, oat flour and avocado oil...
Even though this dish is missing butter and gluten it is not missing a single gram of flavor. Desserts are often broken down into an army of free radicals running destruction through our veins, but what happens when we mix antioxidant rich blueberries and pomegranates? You get this delightful cobbler crisp. This was one of 4 recipes shown on 8 News Now on December 10th and below, is the method to my madness.
Recipe
2lbs Frozen Blueberries or fresh if they are in season
1c Pomegranate Juice, Pomwonderful is wonderful
1/2oz Fresh Ginger, minced
1/4c Organic Cane Sugar
1/2tsp Cinnamon, ground
1/4oz Fresh Thyme Leaves
2ea Tangerines, zested and juiced
1-2 Corn Starch Slurry
Topping
1/2c Old Fashioned Oats, the flat ones like in the picture
1/2c Oat Flour
2oz Avocado Oil
1/4c Brown Sugar
1/2tsp Cinnamon
What To Do
The first thing will be to lightly cook the ginger in a large pot on the stove. Use about 1 tablespoon of avocado oil over medium high heat and lightly cook the ginger before adding the blueberries. As the blueberries cook, they will release their precious delicious juice and then start to bubble. When that happens lower the heat from scorching, to simmering. Now you can add more goodness, like the cinnamon, tangerine zest, which is just the shaved orange part of the skin and squeeze the juice out as well. What's left on the tangerine is bitter and worse when it's cooked. Add the pomegranate juice and return to a simmer and add the thyme. Fresh herbs don't need to be cooked for very long to get to their full flavor. Now add the sugar and wait until dissolves and when the liquid simmers again, add the corn starch & water slurry until tight bubbles form.
While you're waiting for your berries to boil use a mixing bowl to scale your oats and oat flour and add the light brown sugar. Mix by hand until the ingredients are blended then add the cinnamon and avocado oil. The oil replaces the butter in a traditional topping but it will bind the dry ingredients together. Mix them well without breaking up the clumps to fine and turn it to a sandy texture. Once those clumps toast in the oven you'll find yourself only picking the crunchy ones off the top. Anyone else caught doing that gets a wooden spoon across the knuckles.
If you're serving this same day, dump you berry mixture into a casserole dish and cover it with the crumble topping and place it in a 425f oven until the topping is toasted. This won't take long and your berries will already be hot. Let it cool for a while before serving so your guests don't melt the roof of their mouth off
If you're prepping for another day, you can still add the berry mix to a casserole dish and let it cool completely. Larger more shallow glass or metal dishes will cool much faster than something narrow and deep, like a pot or plastic container. You can store the topping at room temp in a sealed bag or container. Otherwise it will get soggy in the refrigerator and especially on top of the berries. Before you are ready to dive into this dish, reheat it in the oven until you see some bubbles before adding the topping. Remove it from the oven to add the topping so you don't touch the oven with your hands. Your knuckles will touch the top of the oven, I promise. I've done it a million times and will do it a million more.
Carefully put it back in the oven and brown it nice. Wondering how long that will take? yea me too, me too.
Enjoy in Good Health
-PG