Recipe: "Basic Crumble Topping"

I designed this flexible fruit topping years ago, but just came across it and realized I hadn't posted it.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon spice (cinnamon, ground ginger, allspice, or whatever you like)
1/3 cup butter
Optional: up to 1/4 cup of nuts, chips, or other tasty chunks of something

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350º.

Combine 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup rolled oats, and 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar.  Add any spices or other extras.  Slice the butter into squares and add to the dry ingredients.  Use a pastry blender to mix the contents until loose and crumbly.

Spray a glass or ceramic pie plate with cooking spray.  Spread the fruit filling in the bottom of the pie plate.  Then sprinkle the crumble topping evenly over the filling.  Bake at 350º for 20-30 minutes, until topping is golden-crisp and filling is bubbly.

Notes:

Granola may be substituted for some or all of the rolled oats.  Flavored granola such as ginger, honey, maple, etc. is especially tasty.

Spices commonly used with fruit include allspice, cardamom, clove, cinnamon, ground ginger, mace, and nutmeg.  Consider using two or more spices in the cobbler topping if the fruit filling is unspiced.  Another option is to use one spice in the topping and a different, complementary spice in the fruit filling.  You can make your own spice blends, too.

Good additions to the topping include chopped English walnuts, black walnuts, pecans, or macadamia nuts; ginger chips or diced crystallized ginger; white chocolate, milk chocolate, semisweet chocolate, dark chocolate, or swirled chips; peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips, caramel chips, or other fancy chips; toffee bits; graham cracker crumbs or flavored shortbread crumbs.  Match the extras to the fruit filling.

This topping works well over raw fruit (which will need sugar and usually spices in it), precooked fruit filling, and canned fruit filling.  Raw fruit filling may need more cooking time.  The topping can be customized for pretty much any pie fruit. 

A "crumble" or "crisp" is a fruit dessert with a streusel-type crumbly top.  "Cobbler" is often used as a generic term for desserts with an open top and no bottom crust, but technically applies to a biscuit-type surface.