I know, it sounds more like a skin disease than the name of a dessert, but trust me– by the end of this post, you’ll be ready to dig in.

These are groats. More specifically, they’re whole oat grains, complete with the cereal germ and bran. This means they’re healthier than regular rolled oats, but it also means they take longer to cook. After purchasing a few cookbooks that extol the use of whole grains, I have taken to haunting the bulk foods section at whole foods. I’ve tried quite a few, (kasha, farro, pearled barley…) but groats are my new favorite. There aren’t a ton of recipes featuring groats, so after finding myself with an abundance of local apples, I decided to make my own.

Apple-Groat Crumble

6 cups of apples; peeled, cored, and thinly sliced (about 2 lbs)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup agave nectar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
dash of cloves
1 1/2 tbsp soy flour

For the crumble:
1/2 cup uncooked groats
1 cup uncooked rolled oats
1/3 cup demerara, or light brown sugar
1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour
6 tbsp salted butter, softened

First, cook your groats. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the groats and toast for a minute or so, until the grains are a shade darker and begin to smell nutty. They will sizzle and pop in the pan. Next add a half cup of water, turning the heat up to medium-high. Cook until the water is nearly evaporated, then add a half a cup more. Continue this until the groats are tender and chewy and the cooking liquid evaporated, using about 2 1/2 cups of water total. Set the groats aside to cool slightly.

While your groats are going on the stove, put that lemon juice in a large bowl. Prepare your apples, adding them to the bowl and tossing them in the lemon juice as you go. Add the agave nectar, spices, salt, and soy flour, and mix to distribute the ingredients. Pour the apples and remaining liquid into a large baking dish (9″x13″ works, but my favorite is a weird 10.5″x8.75″ dish I have).

In a medium bowl, combine the whole wheat pastry flour, demerara, rolled oats, groats, and remaining 5 tbsp of butter. Using your fingers, combine butter with the dry ingredients until coarse crumbs form. Sprinkle crumble mixture over the apples. Bake at 375 degrees for 50-55 minutes, or until the crumb topping is golden brown.

Note about flours: Unless you are also a flour collector, you may not have soy flour on hand. I use it because it adds protein and extends the shelf life of baked goods, but you can easily swap this for regular all-purpose flour. Whole wheat pastry flour is also interchangeable with regular all-purpose flour in this recipe, but I recommend picking up a bag if you can– you get the health benefits of regular whole wheat flour without the heaviness and cardboard flavor it usually imparts.

It’s sweet enough for dessert, and hearty enough for breakfast. I like mine with a drizzle of cream and a cup of tea.

I got a hot tip about some cheap strawberries last weekend. It’s a little while past the peak of their season, and sure enough, they weren’t the prettiest berries– but at 99 cents a pound, I knew they had jam-making potential.

Now, I know I didn’t make this up, but I also don’t know where I learned it: when I make any kind of berry jam, I sneak in an apple. Berries don’t have much pectin to speak of, and you can get them there with a bit of lemon juice, but if you want a thick, gelled jam without adding in a commercially produced pectin, an apple’s a good way to go.

I have also mentioned before that I am not a fan of super sweet jams, so the standard ratio of four parts berries to three parts sugar is not one I subscribe to. It means my jam has a shorter shelf life, but because it’s less sweet, you’ll want to use much more of it.

For about 4 pint jars of strawberry jam, you’ll need:

8 cups of strawberries, hulled and sliced
a scant 2 cups of sugar (more or less depending on the sweetness of your berries)
a lemon
an apple

Put your hulled and sliced berries and your sugar in a large, heavy-bottomed sauce pan. Using a paring knife, remove the peel and pith from the lemon, and add that to the pot (I cut it off in one long piece so it’s easy to fish out later). This helps add flavor and additional pectin. Squeeze as much lemon juice as possible out of the remaining fruit. Peel, core, and roughly chop your apple, and using a blender or food processor, puree the apple and lemon juice and add it to the pot. If you’re pressed for time, you could also just throw in about 3/4 cup of applesauce and skip the apple entirely. Mix everything together thoroughly, so that the sugar is evenly distributed and can begin to dissolve. Your pot should look like this:

Cover, and let the berries macerate for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until they have released a lot of juice. While they’re sitting you can sanitize some jars. After 2 hours, they should look like this:

Now you’re ready to cook. Find a small white or light-colored plate and put it in the freezer. Put the pot over medium heat, and stir. This part takes about 45 minutes or so. Make sure you’re stirring constantly, because a batch of burnt jam is pretty useless. Your jam might reach a very gentle boil– this is ok, but if it becomes more than gentle, turn down the heat. After a while, the juice will reduce, the berries will begin to break down, and everything will thicken. At this point, turn the heat all the way down, retrieve that plate from the freezer, and drop a bit of jam onto it. The cold plate will cool the jam quickly, and you’ll be able to tell whether or not it has gelled. After a few seconds, run a fingernail through the jam drop. If it seems like it’s solidified some, you’re done cooking. If it’s still runny, turn the heat back up to medium, return the plate to the freezer, and retest every minute or so. When your jam is cooked, ladle it into jars, screw on the lids and bands, and let it cool to room temperature. Store in the fridge. The jam will be good for a couple months– if it lasts that long.