Perhaps it is not particularly wise of me to experiment with bread baking before my first cup of coffee, but I’m just a wild risk taker. Danger girl, that’s me. Of course, my non-coffee-wakened mind just misread the butter wrapper and thought that 1/3 of a cup of butter was marked as the equivalent of a little more than a tablespoon. There I am, trying to cream together a tablespoon of butter with a cup of sugar, wondering how on earth it’s going to be creamy, when it finally occurs to me that 1/3 of a cup of butter should look like a lot more than that.
After the apple pie making on Friday, I had about a cup left of pie filling, and decided to make some kind of apple bread this morning. Not having an apple bread recipe, I decided to pretty much make something up, after reading a few recipes online. This could be disastrous, people.
Orange Cocoa Apple Bread
- 2 c. all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- a bit less than a tsp. of salt
- 1/3 c. butter
- 1 c. sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 c. orange juice
- 1 T. unsweetened cocoa powder
- about 2 1/2 c. apple pie filling mixture (add extra apple slices, if necessary)
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a small mixing bowl, and set aside. In a larger bowl, cream together the butter and the sugar until they are well mixed and creamy. (I feel like I’ve been doing this ridiculously often lately, and if I weren’t pretty sure that after Christmas there would be significantly less baking happening, I’d buy myself a mixer.) Add the orange juice, one egg, and the cocoa, and mix together well. The sugar will probably still be a little clumpy, and you might want to experiment with beating the egg in first, and then adding the orange juice and cocoa, but it seemed alright to me.
Add the flour to the butter and egg mixture, a little at a time, mixing it in to form a thick, creamy dough. When it’s well mixed, add in the apples. This will add a little more moisture, so stir this all together well to incorporate the apple liquid into the dough.
Then just pour it all into a greased bread loaf pan, and bake for 60-70 minutes. You can check it with a knife or toothpick–if it comes out clean, it’s finished. Then let it cool for about 10 minutes before turning it out of the loaf pan.
Bread experiment successful! And I got a few cups of coffee in while it was baking. There is just a faint cocoa-ey taste, and I’m glad I didn’t cut the apple pieces any smaller; the big chunks of baked apple are perfect.