A while ago I read a post on a message board I frequent about recipes that you are always asked for. You know the kind - every time you make / bake a certain food or dessert everyone says, "Oh, I must get this recipe from you!" One of the posters, Yvonne, contributed, "Here is the infamous, done to death apple bread recipe that I shared with all my sisters in law. They begged for the recipe, and then proceded to make it over and over as if this were the only recipe on this planet ... and KILLED it! I can't eat it anymore, I'm so done with this. My sister in law Yolin actually doubled the recipe and baked it into a birthday cake.
"This is easy to make with ingredients always on hand. It's so good. People will beg you for the recipe. Then you will give it out, and it will appear at every single function you attend there after, and then you get sick of it. Don't hate me, I told you so."
It's that good. So here's the recipe:
I must note, I left out the nuts because Grant doesn't like nuts in things and I left off the cinnamon sugar on top too - the one time I did put it on, it formed a sugary crust that just fell off.
Yvonne's Done-to-death Apple Bread
Oven 325F / 170C, bakes in about 1 hour and 10 minutes
3 eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 Tablespoon vanilla
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 cups chopped, pared, cored apples (about 3-4) (I used 5 Golden Delicious apples that had started to go a little past their best and it was divine)
1 cup chopped pecans
Topping:
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1. Preheat oven to slow 325. Grease and flour two standard loaf pans (or use those mini loaf pans.)
2. Stir together the eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla in medium sized bowl until well mixed.
3. Combine the flour, soda and cinnamon in another bowl and then then stir into the liquid ingredients until just evenly mixed. Stir in the apples and pecans. The mixture will be very thick and gloppy. Divide between the loaf pans.
4. Prepare the topping: combine the sugar and cinnamon in a small cup, and sprinkle over the loaves.
5. Bake in preheated oven at 325F / 170C for 1 hour and 10 minutes, approximately. Check it carefully with a tester inserted in center comes out CLEAN. Make sure it's done. Sometimes in my oven they take longer than the time specified. Make sure they are done. Nothing worse than raw middle.
Let the breads cool in the pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. Run a thin knife around the edges of the pans. Remove the breads from the pans to wire racks to cool.
The breads are heavenly if you eat them warm, and even better the second day. Wrap them tightly in plastic wrap or foil and store at room temperature.
