During the summer here in Arizona there are many days that you don’t want to turn the oven on because it is just too hot.
I thought up the concept of making traditional fruit desserts such as crumbles and crisps on the stovetop instead of in the oven.
If you don’t have the heat issue that I do and want to make this recipe in the oven, you will need to cut the amount of fresh cherries down to 8 cups. That is all that will fit in the 8′x 8″ pan. The cherries shrink a lot as they cook down so I increased the quantity to 10 cups for my stovetop method.
This method is really easy but you do need to keep stirring the fruit as it cooks down so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Keep an eye on it when it is covered so it does not boil over and make a mess (yes, it happened to me the first time I made it!)
The topping mixture for this Cherry Crumble is gluten free but it does have almonds in it. You can omit the almonds if you wish and just add more GF flour mix and sugar instead.
There is less than 1/2 cup of sugar in this whole dessert!
I shared this recipe with This Weeks Cravings at Mom’s Crazy Cooking, Sweets For A Saturday at Sweet As Sugar Cookies
Place in large saucepan or dutch oven and heat on low until well mixed and softened:
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tblsp granulated tapioca mixed with 1/2 cup of water
Turn heat up slightly and add (4 pounds) 10 cups of fresh pitted cherries (pay close attention that all of the pits come out!)
Stir and cover with lid. Stir often so mixture does not stick to the bottom of the pan or boil over.
When the cherry mixture has formed quite a bit of juice after 20- 30 minutes, remove the lid and continue stirring. Let cherries cook down to the point where they would be done if you had baked the Crumble in the oven. The tapioca in the mixture will thicken it some overnight, so leave some extra juice for it to absorb.
When it reaches that point, take the cherries off of the heat and let cool slightly before pouring into an 8′x 8′ pan.
While cherries are cooking, prepare topping.
Mix dry ingredients together in small bowl:
1/2 cup GF flour mix*
3 Tblsp brown sugar
1/8 teasp salt
1/4 teasp cinnamon
Melt 3 Tblsp butter in a pan
Add dry ingredients to butter and stir together.
Heat on low heat, stirring often until topping dries back out into a crumbly mixture. This will take 10-15 minutes.
Add 1/2 cup of lightly toasted almonds to the mixture as it is cooking.
When mixture resembles the topping as it would be if the Cherry Crumble had been baked in an oven, scatter it over the top of the cooked cherries in the 8″x 8″ pan.
Press the topping down slightly into the cherry mixture so it will absorb some of the juices.
This recipe serves 6-8
*Gluten Free Flour Mixture
The GF flour mixture that I use is pretty standard. I use Authentic Foods gluten free flours because they are ground more finely than commercial brand GF flours that you can buy off the shelf. This results in wonderful baked goods that do not have that “gritty” feel when you chew them like so many products that we all tried in the beginning! I have Authentic Foods flours available in my amazon.com store here on my blog.
GF Flour Mixture
2 cups AF Superfine Brown Rice Flour
2/3 cup AF Potato Starch Flour
1/3 cup AF Tapioca Flour
I make up several batches of this mixture at a time and keep it in a cannister. I keep all of my other GF flours in the freezer.
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Thanks so much for linking up to This Week’s Cravings! I did a Diet Cherry Coke Cake recipe (not gluten-free), but I love that your recipe is GF. Don’t forget to come back next week for our theme of “kid-friendly recipes”.
http://momscrazycooking.blogspot.com/search/label/THIS%20WEEKS%20CRAVINGS
Hi Tina! I knew you would be happy to see a GF cherry recipe!