Rhubarb and Gingerbread Man Crumble

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a few months, is that bad for me to admit? I've sort of been on an independent post strike when it comes to this but I've finally decided it's time, I guess at least now it's a little more seasonally relevant.

About four months ago I came up with the idea for this crumble and I immediately wrote the blog post, it was funny, witty and down right entertaining, just let me toot my own horn about how amazing this post was, I used the word christmas more than 6 times there where hot chocolate and mini human references, let's bear in mind it was June while I was writing it, and now it's all gone. In my ever so tired state I don't know what the heck I did but it's disappeared and just as I managed to delete my entire post which was 98% finished auto-save stepped in to punch me in the gut. How can you own a computer that can literally track everything you do and remember stuff even when you've deleted it, yet randomly be able to press a few buttons and my work just goes down the drain, I'm sure someone's sitting on the other side of that screen yelling at me how to get it back but nevermind.

Our Rhubarb plant was insane when I made this, so you might not have as much rhubarb and I honestly think when it comes to crumble the recipe is sometimes more of a suggestion, your dish is unlikely to be the same size as mine. If you generally stick to the bases of filling your dish to the top it'll bake down a little and work out about right.

For the rhubarb
1.25 kg Rhubarb
160g/ 3/4 cup caster sugar
juice and zest of 2 oranges
1 tbsp cornflour (optional)

For the crumble
140g/ 6/10 cup Butter/margarine (5oz)
280g/2 1/4 cups plain flour (10oz)
85g/ 1/2 cup demerara sugar (3oz)
Pinch of ginger

Make your gingerbread men, these can be pre-baked, leftovers or specifically made for this crumble my favourite recipe is here, if you're adapting you recipe to make mini gingerbread men these usually take about 3-4 minutes or usually big gingerbread men is fine too.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4

Chop the rhubarb and place in a saucepan with the sugar, juice and zest of your oranges and cornflour. Cook the rhubarb stirring occasionally until slightly soft.

For the crumble rub the butter and flour together with your fingertips until the texture or light breadcrumbs, add the sugar and a pinch of ginger and stir in.

Spoon the cooked rhubarb into your dish, level out and sprinkle the crumble mixture on top, scatter with gingerbread men and bake in a pre-heated oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden.