Ground Cherry Crumble

Ground cherry crumble is not only delicious but wonderfully easy to make. As the berries bake, they burst, creating a tender, almost jammy, fruit filling. In this recipe, coconut and lime highlight their pineapple-like flavour for a crumble that feels both comforting and bright.

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Suddenly we’re into crumble season. We’ve jumped straight from summer to autumn without much in the way of transition. Luckily I love autumn. The light has a unique soft and diffused quality, the colours are just breathtaking and the produce is both varied and bountiful.

Dive Right In

• What Are Ground Cherries
• Why You’ll Want To Make Ground Cherry Crumble
• Ingredients, Additions And Substitutions
• How To Make Ground Cherry Crumble
• Other Crumble Recipes You Might Like
• Keep In Touch
• Pin It
• The Recipe

What Are Ground Cherries?

If you’ve not come across ground cherries before, they’re a wondrous thing and well worth cultivating.

Ground cherries, Physalis pruinosa, are little golden berries enclosed in a papery husk. They’re indigenous to North America and are members of the nightshade family. Though similar to cape gooseberries which you might be more familiar with, these less tart members of the physalis genus are really easy to grow in the UK.

You can eat the berries both raw and cooked. They’re quite sweet and slightly tart when yellow, but bitter and potentially poisonous if green. They taste a little like pineapples, so flavours such as lime and coconut pair well with them.

Like most yellow fruit and vegetables, ground cherries are rich in antioxidants. They’re also high in fibre and vitamin C. (Ref: University of Rochester)

Not only are they easy to grow, but they’re quick to prepare too. All you need to do is remove the husks, which takes virtually no time at all. You don’t even need to wash them. They’re a lot less messy than pitting real cherries. The husks (calyces) are poisonous by the way, so don’t attempt to try them.

If you have a garden and like to grow edibles, I highly recommend ground cherries. They’re very easy to grow and produce prolific amounts of fruit. Once you have them, you’ve pretty much got them for life, even though they’re effectively annuals in the UK. This is because they are great self seeders.

Why You’ll Want To Make Ground Cherry Crumble

Here are a few reasons why this ground cherry crumble deserves a spot on your table:

• Coconut and lime twist – adds extra depth and brightness, and complements the fruit really well.
• Easy to make – simple ingredients and minimal prep for a quick, fuss-free dessert.
• Jammy texture – the berries burst as they bake, creating a soft, luscious fruit layer.
• Make ahead – prepare a few hours in advance and bake just before you’re ready to eat.
• Seasonal highlight – a brilliant way to use autumn ground cherries when they’re at their best. And everyone love crumble.
• Unique flavour – ground cherries have a tropical, pineapple-like taste you won’t get from other crumble fillings.
• Versatile – add apples, blackberries or both to make up the numbers. Delicious served warm with cream, custard or ice cream and it’s even good cold the next day.
• Wholesome crumble topping – made with wholemeal and coconut flours for a nutty, slightly exotic crumbly crunch.

With all that in mind, let’s get baking.

Ingredients, Additions and Substitutions

Fruit

Ground cherries are the star of the show here. But if you don’t have enough of them or fancy adding something else, autumnal blackberries, apples or both work very nicely to bulk them up or ring the changes.

I used a handful of blackberries for the crumble you can see in the images here as I didn’t have quite enough ground cherries left to make a decent quantity.

Topping

I like a decent amount of crumble on my fruit, so the quantity here is fairly generous. Reduce the amount by a quarter, if you prefer less.

Wholemeal flour makes an excellent crumble topping. It’s a crumblier type of flour anyway and it has a nutty element, not to say a healthy one.

I’ve also added coconut flour, but you could swap that for desiccated coconut if you want it to taste more coconutty. If you don’t like the flavour, just leave it out.

I like to use demerara sugar for crumbles. It adds a crunchy texture with caramel overtones which just seems to work brilliantly with fruit. If you don’t have any, use golden caster sugar or golden granulated sugar instead. Both of these are less refined than plain white sugar.

Ground cherries aren’t particularly tart, so you don’t need much in the way of sugar to sweeten them. If you like a sweet crumble topping, you might like to add an additional ten to fifteen grams of sugar to it. Mine is sweet enough for us, but not overly so.

How To Make Ground Cherry Crumble

It’s hard to find a baked fruity pudding as easy as a crumble to make. This ground cherry crumble is one of the easiest and quickest as the fruit is so simple to prepare.

Please refer to the recipe card at the bottom of this post for cooking temperatures and quantities of ingredients used.

Step 1. Prepare Fruit Filling

Lightly butter a small baking dish. I do this by rubbing a butter paper around the bottom and sides of the dish. There’s usually enough butter clinging to the paper for this task.

Remove the husks from the ground cherries and place in the bottom of a small baking dish. Add any blackberries, if using. If you’d like to add some apples too, peel, core and finely chop first.

Finely grate the lime zest into a wide mixing bowl, then set aside. I love my microplane (affiliate link) for this. It’s quick and easy.

Squeeze the lime juice over the fruit then add the water.

Sprinkle the sugar over the top.

Step 2. Make Crumble Topping

Take your butter out of the fridge and cut it into small pieces. Add it to the bowl containing the lime zest, then add the flours and salt.

Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until the mix more or less resembles breadcrumbs.

Add the sugar and give a good stir with a large metal spoon.

Spoon the crumble over the fruit to form an even layer. Finish by sprinkling the final bit of sugar over the crumble.

Top Tip

You can leave the crumble at this point and bake it just before you’re ready to eat. It will be fine for a few hours.

Step 3. Bake & Serve Ground Cherry Crumble

Bake in the middle of the oven until the crumble is golden and the fruit cooked and bubbling.

Leave to cool for five minutes or so, then serve with clotted cream whilst still warm. Failing that, any type of cream is works as does custard or ice cream. It’s also surprisingly good served cold the next day.

Will serve two with hearty appetites or three with more modest ones.

Other Crumble Recipes You Might Like

• Apple crumble & custard cakes
• Blackberry & apple crumble
• Blackberry & apple crumble bars
• Chocolate blackcurrant buckle
• Chocolate chip apple crumble
• Rhubarb crumble

Keep in Touch

Thank you for visiting Tin and Thyme. If you make this ground cherry crumble, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. Do you have any recommendations or tips for using ground cherries?

Please rate the recipe too. And do tag me @choclette8 on Instagram with your images, I love to see your take on my recipes.

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If you’d like more ground cherry recipes, follow the link and you’ll find I have quite a lot of them. All delicious and nutritious, of course.

Choclette x

Ground Cherry Crumble. PIN IT.

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