The Valhalla Experiment: Apple Bread

Recipe from: allrecipes.com/recipe/223602/apple-bread-2/

I've been experimenting with different types of bread because where I am currently, all we have in the pantry are baking goods. But that's great, I think, because bread's been a staple of literally every culture since civilization began. This is a quick-bread recipe I found to get rid of the apples that have been sitting on the counter for weeks (they were still good, mind you).

Ingredients

Cooking spray
3 cups all-purpose flour (I have no idea how you have to change the recipe if you're using self-rising flour; I'd assume you'd omit the baking soda and salt, but I'm not one-hundred percent sure.)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
The recipe says that 1 cup chopped walnuts are an optional addition (which makes me want to try it with cranberries, too, in the fall), but I didn't have any, so I left those out.
3 apples (the recipe says 3 cups, which is about three apples), peeled, cored, and chopped
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
3 eggs, beaten (if I intend to take this project seriously, I need to start buying farm-fresh)
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (one of those teaspoons, for my version, was a mixture we had on hand of brown sugar, nutmeg, Saigon cinnamon, and a little bit of salt)

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. I know that sounds a little low, but you're going to be cooking it a long time. Prepare your loaf pan(s) by spraying them liberally (sides and all) with cooking spray. The yield of this particular recipe is two loaves. I only baked one because we only have one loaf pan. The rest of the batter is sitting in my fridge for tomorrow.

In a large mixing bowl, mix your flour, baking soda, salt, walnuts (or cranberries, if you chose to add either), and apples.

In another, slightly smaller mixing bowl, beat together your eggs, oil, sugar, and cinnamon. I would suggest beating the eggs separately first, so that you can be sure that a) they are thoroughly beaten, and b) that no rogue bits of shell find their way into the batter.

It was at this point that I realized that we didn't have enough sugar. Panicking and not thinking, I dumped half a cup of sugar into the flour-apple mix, since recipes usually instruct you to mix the sugar in with the dry ingredients. I'm relieved to find that this didn't hurt anything, but I'll explain in a little bit why you need to put at least most of the sugar into the egg mixture.

All told, I had about a cup of sugar left, and it was too late to cut the recipe in half (which I was going to do anyway, but how does one cut three eggs in half?). So, I saved the other half cup of sugar, stored the bowls in the fridge, and waited until we were able to take a trip to the store.

When I retrieved the bowls a few hours later, nothing had been altered save for a few ice crystals in the eggs, so I carried on with the original plan.

Here's why the sugar needs to be mixed in with the eggs: it creates a creamy, cinnamony sauce kind of like that which you find in the filling of apple pie (except this stuff contains raw eggs).

Raw eggs notwithstanding, I was sorely tempted to take a bite.

Now, you mix the two mixtures together. I added the wet to the dry, but I would recommend adding the dry to the wet, so you don't have to worry about those pesky, hard-to-reach flour reserves on the bottom.

Then, just divide the batter between your loaf pans and bake them for 90 minutes, or until they pass the toothpick test (when a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean).