Name: Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Australian
Ingredients: 400g rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 2cm pieces; 400g strawberries, hulled and halved (quartered if large); 70g caster sugar; 2 tbsp cornflour; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 1 tsp orange zest (optional); 120g plain flour; 60g rolled oats; 80g brown sugar; 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon; pinch of salt; 120g butter, chilled and cubed

Strawberries and rhubarb are both at their best right now, and they balance each other out well: rhubarb is sharp enough that a dessert made with it alone needs a lot of sugar, while strawberries bring natural sweetness and body so you can hold back a little.

Cut the rhubarb into even pieces, around 2cm, so it cooks through at roughly the same rate as the strawberries. If you're using the thick end of the stalks, they take slightly longer to soften than the thinner tops, so mix up a batch with a range of thicknesses rather than using all one end.

Tossing the fruit with cornflour before it goes into the dish is what stops the filling turning watery once it bakes. Fruit this juicy releases a lot of liquid in the oven, and the cornflour thickens it into more of a jammy sauce instead of a thin syrup pooling at the edges.

For the topping, work the butter into the dry ingredients until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs with a few larger clumps left. Overworking it into a smooth paste gives you a topping that bakes hard rather than staying crumbly.