Christmas Baking Galore! Part 2

It's Christmas eve and everything is ready and packed. So while relaxing and having a much deserved rest I have decided to continue the Christmas baking special, I have started yesterday.

Today, I was feeling more creative and decided to properly package my Apple Nut Loaves for my friends and family. I used labels which I have printed off of Missy Ballance's blog, which I came across in Pinterest. Make sure you stop by her blog, she has amazing ideas and such a cute site: http://missyballance.typepad.com/crafty_carnival/

So here you go: Apple Nut Loaves packaged just like large chocolates :P

Dry ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tbsp. ground cinnamon (you can use a tad bit more if you like the cinnamon taste)


Wet ingredients:

4 large eggs
1 1/3 cups vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups sugar (this will melt with the wet ingredients)

4-5 apples
1 cup  nuts.
( I use more apples because I love a cake which is laden with apples but the recipe officially calls for 4-5 apples. As nuts, I usually use walnuts but this time decided to use hazelnuts instead and I love the combination better.)

1) Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (approx. 350 F)

2) Sift all dry ingredients and mix well.

3) Combine the wet ingredients and the sugar. I manually whisk the wet ingredients until the sugar has dissolved but you may choose to use an electric mixer. As usual, I remind you to not over do the mixing!

4) Incorporate the well sifted, mixed dry ingredients together with the wet ingredients. Once you have a nice batter simply fold in the apples.

5) The nuts can be mixed into the batter with apples or else you may choose to just sprinkle the top of the cakes with nuts. Or you can do both :P

5) Pour the batter into appropriate non stick, well greased baking sheets. I have bought paper containers for these and since the batter is so thick they baked nicely without leaking out of the paper. The best thing about this batter is that it can be made into muffins, loaves and even cakes, you can choose whichever.

6) Bake for about 1 hr but be careful, just like the pumpkin loaves the smaller the size of the containers, the quicker the cakes will bake. In fact mine baked in about 45mins, whereas when I baked a large cake it took slightly longer than an hour.

My advice is to keep an eye on whatever you are baking, even the make of your oven might determine how long things take to bake. Use the toothpick to make sure the middle is well baked.