I write this in the midst of attempting to make an apple crumble. I say attempting because—here is my dark secret: I don’t make a good crumble.

I don’t know what the problem is. I can make pasta from scratch. I can joint a chicken. I’m a pretty dab hand with sauces and reductions. I’ve gotten to grips with other classics of English cuisine: bangers and mash, bubble and squeak, and full Sunday roasts with Yorkshire pudding. And I can whip up a good loaf of bread, bake a decent cupcake and even make an acceptable fruit pie. But the crumble defeats me.

It probably has something to do with my fear of butter and sugar. Well, fear is the wrong word, but…the thing is, when you bake sweet things from scratch, you’re baldly confronted with just how much sugar and fat goes into those things to make them tender and tasty. It’s tricky to cut corners when you’re baking; generally, if you leave something out, you have to replace it with something that has the same effect or you wind up with a baked good that is too crumbly/dry/tough/tasteless/flat.

Unfortunately, I tend to ignore this fact, so when it comes to making the “crumble” part of apple crumble, I start measuring out butter and sugar, and then I quail and try to use less butter and sugar, but I don’t necessarily balance that out by using less flour as well, so I wind up with baked fruit topped with a gooey, floury paste rather than a sweet, crunchy, crumbly crumble.

But tonight, I threw caution to the wind. Despite the fact that we had spaghetti alla carbonara again for dinner (involving butter, bacon and a whole load of parmesan cheese), I took a blithe approach to the butter and sugar in the crumble I’ve made for dessert. I’m hoping that my generosity in the fat and sugar department will pay off in a crumble that is delectable in both texture and taste. If not, then this might be the end of the line as regards me and baked desserts.

Incidentally, I think I smell burning butter. Gotta run.