Here's A Good Crumble Crust Recipe

[hangininthere]

Crumble Crust

Makes one bottom crust.

1/2 cup rice flour (or crushed cereal or cookies, whatever you want or have on hand)

1/3 cup butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar

Mix ingredients together, this makes a dry crumbly mixture, not a moist pasty mixture.

Press into a pie pan with hands, as thin a layer as you can get. It sticks to bottom of a baked cheesecake nicely, cuts and serves up perfectly.

Don't worry if you can't get it pressed all the way up sides of pan, it bakes well and cuts and serves up well either way, when baked with cheesecake and the like.

For an unbaked cold type pie, such as refrigerator cheesecake and the like, spread the crumble crust on a cookie sheet and pre-bake for about five minutes in oven to crisp. Then press into pan and add filling on top.

***Do not, I repeat, do not pre-bake the crumble crust in pie pan or overbake when pre-baking, it wil turn hard as a rock, happened to me, especially when I pre-baked the crumble crust in pie pan too long, kept waiting for it to lightly brown and feel crispy instead of raw, thinking that meant it was done. Well, rice flour does not brown (until it's hard as a rock and I couldn't even 'saw' through it with a knife, couldn't even get it out of pie plate and had to throw pie plate with stuck on over-done crust away!) And when it was hot, it still felt raw not one bit crispy, weird!

So to pre-cook a crumble crust for an uncooked recipe, to crisp the mixture, just spread out thinly on a cookie sheet in oven for about 5 minutes or so, not too long! The crumble crust mixture will not brown (nor feel crispy until cooled!), feels raw til it cools, when cool it turns crispy for some reason!

When pre-baking a crumble crust for five minutes on cookie sheet, it will not feel or taste crisp when you first take it out of the oven hot, will still feel soft and raw and it will taste still raw, it crisps up when it cools! So don't be fooled into leaving it in longer and longer till it tastes crispy hot in oven, then it will be too late, too overdone and when it cools will be stuck in that position and you won't be able to shape it into pie pan!***

The crumble crust doe not overcook and get hard when in a baked recipe such as baked cheesecake, because the filling keeps it moist enough yet it crisps just right during the baking time of cheesecake, so no worry on that, turns out delicious.

Best wishes all!