I MAY NEVER NEED A DOCTOR AGAIN.

The secret to eternal health (if not youth) is a bushel of apples. Okay there's not quite a bushel (48lbs) here but it's such a great word and I've always wanted to use it in a sentence. My sister found a bag of her neighbours sweet red eating apples loitering on her doorstep when she got home from work (and kindly donated them to me) and the suck-your-cheeks-in-sour green ones are lifted from my mother's garden.

The sweet apples went into an apple bread and the tart ones into an apple jelly (to follow in the next instalment). As my laptop screen is currently fogging up in a cloud of steam from a Witches of Eastwick vat of bubbling brew I'll have to make this fast. The bread is dense and sticky sweet and is a bread in the banana-bread sense, it's a cake really if you ask me. The recipe comes from Tessa Kiros' Apples for Jam and as she says herself it makes a great breakfast treat or an after-school snack or, as you can see, it fits just beautifully into a little tin for portability. One note of caution, make sure you butter AND flour the loaf tin if you don't and half your cake is left behind, don't come crying to me.

APPLE & CINNAMON SUGAR BREAD

• 150g caster sugar
• 150g butter
• 2 eggs
• 120g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarb of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• a little freshly ground cinnamon
• 400g apples, peeled, cored and grated
• 60g walnuts or pecans, lightly toasted and roughly chopped
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

For the topping:

• 60g walnuts or pecans, finely chopped
• 60g brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C. Butter AND flour a 12 x 4 inch loaf tin. Beat together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer, at a medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat them in well. Sift the flour, bicarb of soda, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg and add in a pinch of salt. Reduce mixer speed to low and mix in well. Add the apples, nuts and vanilla and mix those in too. Scrape the mixture into the tin.
2. For the topping, mix the sugar, nuts and cinnamon and then scatter generously over the top of the cake batter. Bake for about 45 minutes or until cake tester into the middle comes out clean. Start checking after 30 minutes and cover with foil if the cake is browning too fast. Cool slightly before turning out gently (it's pretty fragile). Eat it on it's own or with lots of salted butter.

Makes 1 loaf.

Comments

[Anh]

Beautiful recipe!

[Tanna]

Oh what a treat that would be on Christmas morning or a birthday morning.

[peabody]

Oh how I love getting free produce!
And what a great thing you made with those apples.

[brilynn]

I just got a basket of apples from my grandma's trees, I can't wait to start baking with them!

[Tartelette]

What a great recipe! I am keeping it for next week's baking session! We all need this kind of treat after a long day. Thanks for sharing!

[Grainne]

just made it this morning, is it meant to be really greasy? Maybe I put too much butter in it. I used greaseproof paper as opposed to butter and flour on the tin, would this have made it more greasy??

[Laura]

Hi Grainne,

I'm not sure if the greaseproof paper would have made the bread/cake greasy as I used butter and flour. The only thing I can think of is that maybe the butter was too soft. I have storage heating in my place and sometimes in the winter if I leave butter out to soften for too long before using it can have an effect on the texture of what I'm baking.

[Grainne]

Oh I think that might be the problem then - initially the butter was rock hard so it was impossible to whizz the mixture so I melted it. oooops maybe I shouldn't have done that!!!

[Anita]

So yummy looking! I agree, apples are so fabulous right now!