So Honest Mom wrote about 12 Signs It’s Fall in Suburbia, and #1 just got me.
Have you ever been apple-picking? You know, where you drive somewhere far away and pay to pick apples off the tree?
When I lived in New Jersey, my alumni club organized a trip to a (reasonably local) apple orchard. I drove three women I’d never met before to a vaguely rural section of New York, where we and several other cars full of people paid good money to pick apples.
As I discovered when I got home, a lot of apples.
It was clear that I would have to come up with a use for these apples. And so I began to search the Internet. I found a few recipes and whipped up a batch of apple bread, which I took to the office the next day.
There were still apples.
So a day or so later, I baked an apple coffee cake and took that to the office.
At this point, one of my co-workers IM’d me, asking, “This is a lot of baking. Is everything okay?”
I assured her that everything was fine, I’d just been apple picking.
Then I made more apple bread and shipped it to my brother in Texas. When I called to let him know to expect it, the receptionist asked, “Are you the one who sent him that apple bread? His office smells so good!” Now my brother makes me bake him apple bread every year.
You can pick apples here in Southern California, but it’s quite a drive from us, and I think we’ll wait until Baguette is a little older. Plus every time I’ve gone, I’ve missed the actual picking part and have just bought a bag of apples. It’s a long way to go to not pick apples.
So, with no further ado, here’s something to do with your too many apples:
Apple Bread
Ingredients
1-1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup peeled and chopped apple
Instructions
1. Grease and flour a loaf pan and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
3. In a bowl, mix oil and sugar. Add egg and vanilla.
4. Combine dry and liquid ingredients.
5. Stir in apples. Pour into prepared pan.
6. Bake 50–60 minutes.
Photo by Tecfan, via Flickr.
We haven’t gone apple picking either, or any fruit picking for that matter. It’s true that it’s really such a drive, and what with naps and diapers and cranky kids, I didn’t feel like it was worth the drive just yet. Like yourself, we’ll probably go when the kiddo is a bit older to field all those issues.
Thanks for sharing the recipe too! That’s awesome you’ve been baking; we had been doing the same with pumpkin-themed goodies, although we’ve had to stop it because we were just eating too much of it!
I wanted to make apple bread this weekend, but considering the stomach bug I came down with yesterday (Baguette had it Friday), it’s probably for the best that I didn’t. However, I did make pumpkin bread the weekend before, and Baguette and I both love it!