Apple Bread with Cinnamon Swirl

I made applesauce. I made so much applesauce that we will be eating applesauce until the heat death of the universe. Twelve quarts from those remaining apples, cooked down in the biggest pot I own, stirred constantly for two hours because if you stop stirring the bottom scorches and scorched applesauce tastes like disappointment and burned sugar. My arm is still sore. It was worth it.

The trick to good applesauce — and I learned this from Mom, who learned it from her mother, who probably learned it from the original Weber woman who crossed the Atlantic with a recipe and a grudge — is to leave some chunks. Don't process it smooth. Don't use a blender. Just cook the apples until they break down naturally and mash them with a potato masher. You want texture. You want pieces. You want to know that this was an apple once, not a jar of baby food. Cinnamon, a little sugar if the apples are tart, and that's it. Three ingredients. No pectin, no preservatives, no nothing. Just apples and heat and time.

Kevin helped with the stirring. This is notable because Kevin does not cook, as a rule, and his version of helping in the kitchen is usually limited to eating whatever I'm making and saying it's good. But he saw my arm giving out on hour two and he took the spoon without being asked and stirred for thirty minutes while I sat at the table and felt a wave of affection for this man that was completely disproportionate to the act of stirring a pot. Marriage. The grand gestures don't sustain it. The stirring does.

Jack started asking about next year's garden. He wants to expand — more marigolds, more sunflowers, and he wants to try tomatoes. He's five. He's planning a garden expansion like a farmer planning a new field. I told him we'd talk about it in spring. He said he wants to start with soil preparation. He actually said "soil preparation." I looked at Kevin. Kevin said, "He's your kid." He is. He is entirely my kid. He is also Roger Weber's grandkid, and the garden proves it.

Football season is happening all around us. Iowa State is playing and Kevin watches every game and I pretend to care and we eat chili during the games because chili is football food and football food is one of the few food categories I don't take personally. Go Cyclones. Pass the cornbread.

After two hours of stirring and twelve quarts of applesauce in the cellar, Kevin suggested that maybe we were done with apples for the year. He was wrong. There were still a handful of stragglers on the counter—not enough for another batch of sauce, too many to ignore—and a five-year-old asking if we could bake something, because apparently Jack has inherited not just the gardening gene but also the “let’s make something” gene. So we did. This apple bread with a cinnamon swirl is the kind of thing that makes a fall kitchen smell the way a fall kitchen is supposed to smell, and it’s exactly the right thing to have sitting on the counter when Kevin comes in from watching the Cyclones and needs something to go with his coffee.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 55 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes | Servings: 10 slices

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 large eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup neutral oil (vegetable or canola)
1/2 cup plain applesauce (homemade is perfect here)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups peeled, finely diced apple (about 1 large apple)
For the cinnamon swirl:
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Heat your oven to 350°F. Grease a standard 9x5-inch loaf pan and line it with a strip of parchment paper for easy lifting.
Mix the swirl. Stir together the brown sugar, cinnamon, and melted butter in a small bowl until it forms a thick paste. Set aside.
Whisk the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Mix the wet ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until combined. Add the oil, applesauce, and vanilla and whisk until smooth.
Combine. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just barely combined—a few streaks of flour are fine. Fold in the diced apple. Do not overmix.
Layer and swirl. Pour half the batter into the prepared pan. Drop spoonfuls of the cinnamon swirl mixture over the batter and gently spread it. Add the remaining batter on top. Use a butter knife to swirl once or twice through the batter in a figure-eight motion.
Bake. Bake for 50–60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is deep golden brown. If the top is browning too fast after 40 minutes, tent loosely with foil.
Cool. Let the bread cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then lift it out using the parchment and cool on a wire rack for at least 20 minutes before slicing. It slices best when fully cooled.

Nutrition (per serving)

Apple Bread with Cinnamon Swirl — Because When You Have This Many Apples, You Find More Ways to Use Them