Apple Spice Bread

Last night I had a brilliant idea something along the lines of "I should make apple spice bread." As I said, brilliant. Okay, maybe not so much. It's no stroke of genius, but it's fall and there are apples and it's just what you should be doing on an autumn night - baking with apples and spices.

To my trusty Better Homes cookbook! (Imagine me blasting off toward the kitchen, something like Superman, but maybe with a wooden spoon or a whisk in my hand.) Oddly, the recipe for apple bread is the same that is used for zucchini bread. Hmm. If nothing else, I was going to use my all-time favorite banana bread recipe. Below you'll find the BH recipe, with slight adjustments to the amount of spices, mostly because I overflowed the measuring spoon...oops!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon (1.5 for me)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg (1/2 for me)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (my addition - a must for all baking)
1 egg, beaten
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cooking oil
1 1/2 cups finely shredded, peeled apple*

*I cut mine into tiny chunks rather than pull out the food processor. It ended up being 2 cups, or 1.5 apples of the Pink Lady variety. I really wanted to use honeycrisp, but I only had one, and I wanted to be an apple purist. No mixing varieties.

Okay so I was being all Betty Crocker, getting my ingredients together in the separate bowls (see below) until I opened the cabinet to get the oil. Crap. I used the last of it when I made pumpkin bread a week or so ago. Just one more thing I forgot to put on the shopping list...uh oh. But! I did have just enough plain yogurt in the fridge, so I used that in place of the oil.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease bottom and 1/2 way up sides of loaf pan; set aside. (I made a dozen muffins instead.) In medium bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, baking powder and nutmeg. Make a well in center of flour mixture; set aside.

2. In another medium bowl, combine egg, sugar, shredded apple, vanilla extract and oil (or yogurt). Add apple mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened (batter should be lumpy). Spoon batter into prepared pan. I sprinkled the top of the batter with a cinnamon-sugar mix.

3. Bake for 50-55 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely on rack. And here's another thing - I didn't set a timer. Go by smell!