Last Friday I baked apple bread for the first time ever. I’ve made many variations of banana bread before, but I’ve never even heard of apple bread until I started researching quick/easy apple recipes last week. I went apple-picking recently, and I have been wanting to bake something with the apples since bringing them home from the farm. They basically have been sitting in a box in the kitchen begging for me to bake something yummy with them. My first thoughts involved attempting a salted caramel apple pie because I’ve also never baked an apple pie before… but my lazy ass didn’t feel like it. I feel like you really have to be in the mood to commit time into making the perfect pie, and I guess I wasn’t feelin’ it last Friday. I made my first pie ever this summer (a blueberry pie), and it was fun and delicious and everything, but it took me the span of 3 days to make it between getting all the ingredients, making the dough from scratch, letting the dough set in the fridge, prepping the filling, cutting / weaving the lattices, and then FINALLY putting it in the oven. It was a lot of work – work that my lazy ass didn’t feel like doing at the end of last week. I do want to attempt an apple pie some day, but last Friday was not that day. Let’s be real – we all have our lazy days. Maybe I’ll feel more motivated for a special occasion … (Thanksgiving, mayhaps?)
WHAT YOU NEED:
I worked with a recipe from allrecipes.com that I found through Google, and altered it based on some of the suggestions people posted in the comments. I halved the recipe because I only wanted to make 1 loaf instead of 2. I used a combo of McIntosh and Fiji apples (1 of each). I also added a tsp of vanilla extract, ½ tsp of ground nutmeg, and 1 pinch of ground black pepper. Another suggestion I took was subbing out half of the white sugar for brown sugar, hoping to retain more moisture in the bread. The website also gives the option of adding ½ cup walnuts, but because I’m allergic – I left those out ;)
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 ½ cups apples (peeled, cored, chopped) (approx. 2 medium apples)
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 pinch/grind ground black pepper
- demerara sugar (for finishing)
WHAT TO DO:
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Grease bread loaf pan. I used butter to grease my pan, but cooking spray/oil also works. Combine flour, baking soda, salt, and apples in a large bowl. Combine oil, sugars, eggs, vanilla extract, cinnamon, nutmeg, and black pepper in a separate medium/small bowl. I used an electric handheld mixer for this, but a whisk should work too. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and combine using a large spoon until moist. Bake for approx. 70 minutes (until a toothpick can be inserted and removed from center cleanly). Cool for at least 10 minutes before cutting into it.
TIPS TO TRY:
- Personally, I am not the best or fastest apple peeler in the world. (Fun Fact: I also suck when it comes to peeling potatoes..) We don’t own an apple corer, so I had to do it the old fashioned way with a small knife. Not a huge deal, but I was worried that being so slow would cause the apples to brown while I was working with them. I looked up ways to prevent this and came across a blog post written by The Yummy Life, and decided to try soaking my chopped apples in a lemon-water mixture. I used 3 cups of water and the juice of half a lemon. Squeeze the lemon juice into the water and not directly onto the apples so that your apples don’t start tasting like lemon. The citrus should keep them from browning.
- I sprinkled the top with extra cinnamon and some demerara sugar, which added a slight nice crunchiness to the top layer of the loaf.
- Your kitchen is going to smell amazing and you may have to practice some serious self-control so you don’t eat the entire loaf in one sitting. ;)
HOW I EAT MY APPLE BREAD:
It was absolutely perfect when sliced while still warm with a little bit of butter! It’s also delicious at room temperature with nothing on it – breakfast, dessert, or snack! Although I’m not much of a tea drinker, I imagine it being great paired with a cup of tea, too.
I’ve never experimented much cooking with apples, but I thought this was the perfect recipe to start with. What are your favorite apple baking recipes?