A few weeks ago, Neil and I went apple picking in the Ottawa Valley. The apples were pretty terrible, but we bought a 20-pound bushel of them anyway. You had to choose your bushel size before you went picking and if we came out without 20 pounds of apples they’d know it’s because we knew their apples sucked which we would only know if we’d illegally eaten some off the trees, which we had.
Then last weekend, I was visiting family in southern Ontario and they wanted to take the kids apple picking. The kids were so enjoying ferreting out the apples that met my random, changing, and entirely arbitrary criteria that I didn’t have the heart to tell them to stop. So now I have 40 pounds of apples.
As a result, I’ve spent the last few days finding recipes that call for lots of apples, then modifying them to use even more apples. Here’s one of my more successful efforts…
Apple Bundt Cake
Ingredients:
3.5 cups peeled, sliced apple
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup whiskey
2 tsps powdered egg replacer (probably optional)
4 tbsps water (probably optional)
3/4 tsp salt
half a grated nutmeg (1/4 tsp powdered stuff, but grating your own is fun!)
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup coconut oil
Directions:
1) Whisk flour and baking soda together in a large bowl
2) Combine all remaining ingredients except for 3 cups of apple in a medium sized bowl with tall sides. Whizz them with a hand blender for 2 minutes. Or you can do it in your regular blender, but those suck and you should toss yours and get a hand blender instead. Unless it’s a Blendtec or Vitamix, in which case you have my approval and bitter envy.
3) Fold the blended stuff into the dry mixture, until the two are about halfway incorporated.
4) Fold in the remaining 3 cups of apple, very gently, until you can’t see any more dry flour.
5) Pour into a bundt pan greased with coconut oil and/or lined with parchment paper.
6) Bake at 350 degrees for about 70 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
7) Cool completely and turn onto a plate, dust with icing sugar, then serve.
VegOttawa Association 