thursday recipe: apple, pear and banana crumble

We were invited to a friend's place for dinner, I offered to bring dessert. It started out as apple crumble but then I saw pears and thought I'll add those too. My husband Pete who is not a recipe follower (or rule follower fullstop for that matter) asked if I could put banana in it.
Banana?!! Eeew I thought.

I decided to put in one banana just for him and to put it down one end so if like me everyone else eating the crumble wanted to avoid the banana they could. In the spirit of breaking with tradition I threw a handful of chocolate chips on top of the crumble. Like the banana, the choc chips were met with a mixed response.

Is there anything better than eating fruit crumble sitting by the fire?

The options for crumble topping are endless. My favorite includes nuts, this topping however is very basic because I made it when we were staying in a holiday unit with very limited pantry essentials.

We ate this with store bought vanilla ice cream which the kids loved! I don't travel with an ice cream maker :) The crumble is pictured here with natural yoghurt. Vanilla custard would be delicious too.
I'll stop now.

What's your favorite crumble combo? Tell us in the comments and feel free to leave a link to recipes.

Apple, pear and banana crumble

Ingredients

5 apples (Granny Smith are good), peeled, cored and chopped (peeling optional)
3 pears, peeled, cored and chopped (peeling optional)
1/2 cup water
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 banana peeled and chopped into 4 or 5 pieces
1/2 cup oats
1 cup brown rice flour
100 grams butter
10 dried dates
1/2 cup sultanas
a smattering of chocolate chips

To make

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.
Place apples, pears, water and cinnamon in a saucepan and cook over a medium heat until fruit is just starting to soften, about 10 minutes.
While the fruit is cooking, rub the butter into the flour and then stir in the oats and chocolate chips.
Grease an oven proof dish with butter.
When the fruit is just cooked pour the fruit and some of the liquid into the oven proof dish, don't flood the dish with liquid but leave some in so it is nice and moist.
Stir the dates and sultanas into the fruit mixture.
Cover the fruit with the crumble topping and place in the oven until golden brown, about 15 - 20 minutes.