Apple Bread

I'm sorry, it's been awhile.  It was one of those weeks.. busy, busy, busy.  At least I was mostly doing fall things, like drinking hot caramel apple cider, and hiking in the Adirondacks.

But fortunately, the busy week was followed by a THREE DAY WEEKEND.  God, I love being a teacher sometimes.  So after my vocabulary papers were graded, I had plenty of time to make an apple bread.

This comes with a warning... I'm not a good baker :(  I don't know what it is.  There's just a certain amount of patience and carefulness required that I don't possess.  But I tried.  And despite my mistakes, it came out pretty yummy, so I'll share.  If anything, this post teaches you be brave and try, try again.

I started with a basic recipe from AllRecipes.com.  This is usually a good place to start.  Then you can read the reviews and tweak as necessary. (See tweaked ingredients list below for my changes.)

So start by washing, peeling, and dicing your apples.  Careful with that knife!

You need about 2 cups of chopped apples.  I usually like 'em rustic, but this time you want small.

**P.S. In the meantime, you should be preheating your oven to 350 degrees.


Mix your dry ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, flax, oats, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg. (The flax and oats add texture and fiber... yum!)

In a separate bowl, mix your wet ingredients: eggs, applesauce, vanilla, and apples.

Then stir the two mixtures together into your batter.  It will be really thick and hard to stir-- use some elbow grease!

Then pour into your greased bread pans.  Here's where I goofed... this should have gone into TWO bread pans instead of one.  Sadly, I always make this same mistake :(

But it looks pretty awesome anyway, right?? I added another tablespoon of oats and a couple tablespoons of honey to the top.  Yum.

Then bake.  Because I made one giant loaf, after about half an hour it was brown on the outside and raw on the inside.  Darn it!!  But I covered it with aluminum foil and then baked it for 10-ish more minutes, which seems to have done the trick.  If you used two pans, I imagine you could just follow the baking times as directed in the recipe.

Enjoy with your favorite tea and company :)

(Tweaked) Ingredients List: 

• 
  
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup apple sauce
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups chopped apples 
• 3 tablespoons oats (1 tablespoon reserved for top)
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 teaspoons flax seed