Anzac Biscuit Crumble Over Roasted Stone Fruit

1. Heat the oven to 190C, or 170C fan, and butter a 1.5 litre baking dish.
2. Halve the fruit and lift out the stones. Late season freestone peaches twist apart cleanly; early clingstone fruit will not, so cut wedges off the stone instead of fighting it.
3. Lay the halves cut side up in the dish in a single layer, packed close but not stacked.
4. Loosen the jam with the lemon juice in a cup and spoon a little into each hollow, then dot the 20g of butter over the top.
5. Roast the fruit on its own for 18 minutes, until the edges are collapsing and there is syrup in the bottom of the dish.
6. While it roasts, put the biscuits in a bag and crush them to a coarse rubble with a rolling pin.
7. Tip the rubble into a bowl, pour over the melted butter, add the chopped macadamias and the salt, and turn it through with a fork until every piece looks damp.
8. Scatter the crumble over the hot fruit in an even layer. Do not press it down, because the gaps are what let the steam out.
9. Return it to the oven for 12 minutes, until the top is deep gold and the fruit juices are bubbling up at the edges of the dish.
10. Stand it for 10 minutes before serving. Straight from the oven the syrup is molten and the crumble slides.

What to do with hard fruit

Stone fruit in early December is often picked days short of ripe. Use the heaped tablespoon of jam, and give the first bake 25 minutes instead of 18. The jam is insurance against under-ripe fruit, not sweetener for ripe fruit, which is why it goes into the hollows rather than over the top.

Questions we get asked

Can you use biscuits instead of flour in a crumble?

Yes, as long as you pick a biscuit that already contains what a crumble is made of. An Anzac is oats, coconut, golden syrup and butter, so crushed and bound with more butter it is a finished topping. Shortbread works and gives a sandier result. What does not work is a cream filled or chocolate coated biscuit, because the filling melts and the topping turns greasy rather than crisp.

Which stone fruit roasts best?

Yellow flesh peaches and nectarines, halved and left in large pieces. They keep enough structure to still look like fruit after half an hour and they carry the acidity that stops the dish tasting flat. Apricots are excellent but cook faster, so shorten the first bake. Plums give the best colour. Mix two kinds if you like, but cut them so the pieces are a similar size or the softer one disappears.

Can crumble be assembled ahead and baked later?

Assemble it in two halves rather than one. The fruit can be roasted a day ahead and kept covered in the fridge, and the buttered crumble mixture keeps in a container for three days. What does not work is putting a butter bound biscuit topping onto warm fruit and leaving it, because it draws up the syrup and goes soft. Scatter the crumble on straight before its 12 minutes, adding 5 minutes if the fruit is fridge cold.

What to serve with it

Cream, barely whipped and unsweetened, is the right foil for a topping this sweet. If there is a nut allergy at the table, leave the macadamias out and add nothing in their place: the topping does not need them. Jen's Traditional Melting Moments at $9.95 on the side turns a pudding into something closer to afternoon tea, and the rest of the range sits on the Jen's Biscuits page. Our roundup of Australian biscuits and biscuit tins covers which packs travel and which do not.

Jen's Traditional Anzac Biscuits is $9.95 for 300g, and one pack is exactly one crumble. It sits with the rest of our biscuits, alongside the festive entertaining essentials that go out at the same time of year, and there is more of this kind of cooking in our easy Christmas desserts. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post.