So, this is probably just one step above my 20 Minute Cinnamon Rolls in terms of semi-homemade foods, but it turned out okay and it might help you use up some surplus cookies. If you have surplus cookies… we seem to have a lot in the freezer.
I get into these moods where I feel there is too much food in house but I don’t know what to do with it. We’re also kind of trying to go through the freezer and use up food from there, because it’s getting really full. I mean, we somehow lost of pack of breakfast sausage. It’s on the inventory list as still being in the freezer (yes, we made a freezer inventory list) and neither of us remember eating the breakfast sausage, yet we cannot find it anywhere. We actually threw out some homemade ice cream from last summer that we weren’t enamored with to make more room. We’ve eaten all the Trader Joe’s frozen shrimp tempura (so good! so easy!) to get rid of the box. I’ve been braising vegetables with the chicken stock I made so the jar isn’t taking up prime real estate in the freezer basket.
And the cookies… I always seem to toss a couple packs of Girl Scout cookies in the freezer so they don’t go bad. But then I don’t eat them. I have 3 packages of cookie dough balls from the last batch of dough I made, but I haven’t been baking them. And then there’s the shortbread. So much shortbread. When we go to Scottish fairs, someone is always selling shortbread and it always tastes like the best because you’re tired and hungry. So we buy it, eat some, then toss it into the freezer “for later”. Well, T got to the point where he knew we weren’t going to eat it and was ready to toss it. I have an aversion to tossing food unless it’s moldy or slimy, so I announced I would use it within a week. For something.
There were also 4 apples in the fridge from our last CSA box. They had gotten to the point where they weren’t crisp anymore but they were still good apples. Just not eating-out-of-hand apples.
Now, shortbread is basically butter, sugar, and flour. Crumble toppings are basically butter, sugar, flour, and maybe oats or nuts. See where my mind was going with this? Sure, the cookies are already baked, but I bet the butteriness is still there. So, I sliced up the apples, pounded the cookies to crumbs, sprinkled on top, and then baked until the apples were soft.
It turned out pretty well. Not as nice as a real crumble, but the cookies browned a little and mingled with the apple juices. I can tell you it went really well with the cinnamon ice cream from the freezer. And with yogurt for breakfast. So, if you have a plethora of fatty cookies or butter cookies in the house, now you know that it makes a decent fruit crumble in a pinch. Say, if you wanted dessert but didn’t want to work for it. Or if you just wanted to use them up without having to throw them away.
Three Dog Kitchen 