The recipe isn’t by any means difficult, perhaps the most cumbersome part was the chopping and peeling of the apples. I used Macintosh apples, which are rather small, and although I thought I’d use three, I only needed two. I left the raisins and pecans out because I didn’t feel like going to get raisins and I didn’t have pecans. To chop the apples into fine bits, I used a handy little tool that is similar to Pampered Chef’s “Crinkle Cutter”, which has been a staple in my house for as long as I can remember. (Future post on this awesome tool to come.)

Pictured: Chopping tool, apples in small bits.

The first problem I ran into, which makes this post actually interesting, is that the recipe instructions forgot to decide on an amount of sugar. You can see in the ingredient list that it doesn’t call for sugar, but when you get down to the directions, it tells you to “combine flour, sugar, cinnamon…”. Wait, what? So I made my best “experienced” guess and put one cup of granulated sugar in with the mix.

The dry mixture, before the salt issue.

The second problem I ran into was when I got distracted by my housemate coming into the kitchen to inquire what was going on. I mindlessly added a teaspoon of salt to my batter instead of ¼ of a teaspoon. Whoops….so I scooped out as much of what I could discern to be salt as I was able, leaving (hopefully) approximately ¼ of the original value.

After adding the melted butter, the milk, and one egg (that I did not bother to beat before adding…), I found myself hacking at a very thick batter with a wooden spoon. It was quite a task to get that pesky bit of flour at the bottom to conform with the rest of the batter, and maybe that’s a skill that comes with time in baking. I’ll let you know. I then scraped the batter into my greased loaf pan, stuck it in the oven at 350, and hoped for the best.

Apples in Brown Stuff

Forty five minutes later my apple bread was looking less like apples in brown stuff and more like bread! It was really hard to resist the urge to open the oven and check on it, and naturally, I failed. My mother warned me that the bread would cave in if I opened it too early, but luckily I didn’t have that problem. When I took it out after the prescribed 45 minutes, however, a knife inserted into the center didn’t come out completely clean. To remedy this, I let it sit in the hot pan until cooled so that it could continue to cook through the bottom but not burn the top by leaving it in the oven.

The final verdict:

The bottom did end up cooking through. The texture is kind of thick, but not too heavy for breakfast- this would be great in the morning with some coffee. It’s rich, but not very decadent- I wish I had gone for the raisins, it would’ve added some contrast in flavor to make it really pop. My guess on the sugar amount was spot on, and I seem to have been able to remedy the salt problem.             This is a great recipe for people who already have basic ingredients on hand. The only thing you might not have are the apples, which are in season now and quite plentiful! Also, my housemate commented that it smelled great.