To my husband’s delight, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen today. First, I prepared Pork Chop & Spaghetti Casserole for dinner (which ended up getting eaten around three in the afternoon because of my husband’s schedule), and then I set about finding and making a recipe using apples.

 

I had lunch with a friend yesterday, and she brought along a large grocery bag filled with green and red apples. She has several trees on her property, so needless to say she has plenty to spare. I’m not fond of fruit, and I don’t think I’ve ever just sat down and taken a bite from an apple – when and if I do eat apples, they have to be peeled, sliced and consumed with paper-thin pieces of cheddar cheese.

 

I wanted to make good use of my apple bounty, and I eventually found a nice selection of dishes at Just Fruit Recipes. I made the following bread this afternoon, filling my kitchen with a heavenly mix of baking aromas:

Apple Bread

1 C butter or margarine, softened

1 C sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 TBS lemon juice

2 large eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

2 C flour (see my notes below)

¼ tsp. salt

1½ C apples, cored, peeled and coarsely chopped

 

Crumb Mixture:

1 tsp. cinnamon

2 TBS sugar

2 TBS flour

2 TBS butter or margarine, cold

 

Preheat oven to 375º F. Cream butter and sugar together; in another bowl dissolve baking soda in lemon juice. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Beat butter mixture and egg mixture together. Add flour and salt. Mix to combine. Do not over-mix. Gently fold in apples. Spoon half the batter into a large (9x5) loaf pan. Sprinkle with half of the crumb mixture. Spoon in the remaining batter, and sprinkle the top with remaining crumb mixture. Press crumbs gently into surface of batter. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool slightly in pan. Remove bread from pan and cool completely on cooling rack.

 

Crumb Mixture: Mix crumb ingredients in a small bowl, cutting in the butter to get a coarse crumb texture.

I followed the recipe true to form except I cut the batter sugar to one cup, and instead of two cups of flour I used one cup of all-purpose flour and one cup of wheat flour. I also peeled, cored and chopped the apples in advance, letting them stew in a bit of lemon juice to keep their color and to add some zing.

 

The bread was outrageously delectable, but very rich because of the large amount of butter included in the recipe. The crumb topping provided a nice crust on top of the bread, and a slice went very well with a hot cup of coffee.

 

Since I still have a slew of apples left over, perhaps I’ll make a few more loaves of the apple bread to give as Christmas gifts. The ingredients are basic, and the preparation is fairly simple.