A couple of weekends ago I took a trip to Honey Pot Hill Orchards to go apple and pear picking.  I have been apple picking all my life and can’t ever remember being impressed by an orchard….that’s why this time was different.  This place was huge!  They tell you its a “hike” to get to the pears (450 yards) and you’re expecting mountains and streams but it was a lovely walk through apple orchards, blueberry fields and pass one ginormous house that I can only assume belongs to Mr. Honey Pot.  But I digress….the pears and the apples were double the size of anything you see in grocery stores and they are very sweet and very yummy.  All told we came out of the groves with 30 lbs of fruit in 2 $15 bags (and in our pockets and arms and mouth).  So here I am with more or less 20 lbs of apples and no idea what to do with them.  At first I made an apple pie, then came the apple cake, now I’m on to apple bread.

Believe it or not, a recipe for apple bread that isn’t apple bread pudding was sorta kinda hard to find.  I scoured the internet (and by scoured I mean searched for like 15 minutes) until I found a recipe that didn’t have 300 ingredients and looked to be yummy.  I found a winner on Foodgeeks.com (yes, I’m a dork) and because I am so happy with how the bread came out I am going to share with you my take on the recipe (I tweaked the original).  Oh and just so you know this isn’t “bread” bread, it’s bread that you eat slightly warm with melted butter on a cool day with a cup of tea to warm you from the inside out type of bread. Here we go:

Ingredients:

1 cup oil

3 eggs

2 cups sugar

1 3/4 tsp vanilla

4 cups apples, peeled and diced

3 cups flour

1 3/4 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

Chopped nuts (optional)

Combine and set aside the oil, eggs, sugar and vanilla. Put flour, cinnamon, soda and salt in a separate bowl.  Gradually sift dry flour mix into oil mixture.  Add apples.  (At this point it may look too dry, but, in the end, it isn’t). Empty mixture into two greased regular loaf pans or three foil loaf pans. If you like a bit of crunch, sprinkle chopped nuts (I used walnuts) on the top.  Bake in 300° oven for 1-1/2 hours.  Cool 10 minutes before removing from the pan.

Trust me, the cooking temp is right and so is the wait time.  I tried to extract the loaf before the ten minutes and a small part of it broke off (which was my sample piece).  Here is a picture of the apples and the bread (from my phone so they aren’t the best quality) Enjoy!!