Bake along with Bake Off- Date and apple crumble traybake

I love watching the biscuit week on bake off. This week certainly did not disappoint, traybakes, tuiles and biscuit towers.

Some of those towers were impressive, Christine's Bavarian clock tower in particular, my heart was in my mouth a couple of times though!

I decided to make a traybake, I love a traybake and took this as an opportunity to make one that I had not done before, with bake off standard flavours and textures. I have made orange tuiles before, the recipe is here

The date crumble traybake is already a popular traybake, I added mixed spice to the crumble and apple to the date centre to jazz it up a little.

Date and apple crumble traybake

200g dates
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
2 eating apples
200g porridge oats
130g light brown sugar
110g self raising flour
200g butter (I used lactofree spread to no ill affect)

Make the date and apple purée first. Put the dates into a saucepan with 120ml of water and the vanilla. Heat gently for up to 10 minutes until all the water as been absorbed by the dates and they are beginning to  break down.

Remove the dates from the heat, grate the apples and stir into the dates, set aside to cool. 

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C FAN. Grease and line a 23 cm square tin (I used a silicon one that didn't need lining as I had run out of baking paper) 

Pulse the oats, ,flour, sugar and mixed spice. in a food processor (or mix by hand) add the butter and pulse until the mixture is crumble and starts to come together (or alternatively rub in with your fingers).  

Press ~2/3 of the mixture into the prepared tin then top with the date purée.
Lightly crumble and press the remaining 1/3 of the crumble mix on top.

Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes until golden brown. 

Leave to cool in the tin for 15-30 minutes before carefully transferring to a wire rack to cool completely before cutting into squares. 

Be careful these are dangerously addictive! The filling is sweet and sticky and goes fantastically with the lightly spiced crunchy topping.

I think Paul and Mary would have liked these providing I cut them into nice equal squares! They do keep well, but the topping will soften a little.