• 75g plain flour
• 75g ground almonds
• 125g cold butter
• 75g sugar (try golden caster or half brown sugar)
• 50g of sunflower seeds
• 300g pears (or 1 tin of pears if you have it kicking about needing used up)
• 450g dates

1. Preheat the oven to 200c
2. Cut the butter into small chunks
3. If you have a food processor, add the butter, flour and ground almonds and blend until the mix looks like fine breadcrumbs
4. If you don’t have a food processor, put the butter, flour and ground almonds in a large bowl and rub between your fingers and thumbs* until the mix looks like fine breadbrumbs
5. Add the sugar and seeds and gently mix through
6. Leave in the freezer for a couple of hours
7. If the dates are already stoned, skip to 9
8. To remove the stones, hold the date firmly in one hand and make a slice with a sharp knife down the length, poke the stone out with the tip of your finger
9. Roughly chop the dates, in to 4s is good
10. Chop the pears into chunks and add them with the dates to a pan and just cover with boiling water
11. Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, then set aside to cool for 15 minutes
12. Lightly butter an oven dish and spoon in the fruit
13. Take the crumble mix from the freezer and sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of cold water over, gently stir with a fork until you get some small lumps mixed in with the fine crumbs
14. Top the dates with the crumble mix, don’t squash our flatten it down as you want it to be light and crumbly
15. Bake for around 25 minutes, or until it has gone just passed golden and the juice from the fruit is bubbling up
16. Serve with ice-cream, custard or fresh cream, or all three

You can also use this recipe to make date slices – use a 3rd of the crumble mix to make a layer on the bottom of the oven dish, flatten down with a fork. Add the dates on top of this, then add the rest of the crumble as normal. It’s beautiful served cold with hot milk as a porridge substitute.

*if you have warm hands, a pair of rubber gloves helps slow the butter melting