Cooking with Butter...Apple Streusel Bread

Top right: ready for oven, Bottom right, after baking    

This is one of my husband’s favorite breads and I have made it often.   I found it in an earlier edition of Taste of Home, but also in the "Taste of Home Recipe Card Collection 2002".  The recipe first caught my eye because the contributor was June Formanek from Belle Plaine, Iowa. 

This is a good recipe to practice creaming butter and sugar.  Bring your eggs to room temperature too.

Don’t overbake it- check it with a toothpick at 50 minutes.  I line my pan with parchment to make it easier to remove.
You can leave off the streusel, add the cinnamon to the batter, and bake as usual.  Glaze with a little powdered sugar glaze when it's cool.

I make breads like this all year round.  It’s just as good with a summer main-dish salad as it is for a fall breakfast or coffee time anytime.             

Apple Streusel Bread  

     1/2    Cup  Butter -- softened  (1 stick)

  1           Cup  Sugar (7 ounces)

  2           Large  Eggs

  1           Teaspoon  Vanilla Extract

  2           Cups  Flour, All-purpose  (9 ounces)

  1           Teaspoon  Baking Soda

     1/2     Teaspoon  Salt

     1/3    Cup  Buttermilk

  1           Cup  Apple -- chopped and peeled  ( 1 large)

     1/3    Cup  Walnuts – chopped (or pecans)

                        Topping

     1/3    Cup  Flour, All-purpose -- (1 1/2 ounces)

  2           Tablespoons  Sugar

  2           Tablespoons  Brown Sugar -- packed

     1/2     Teaspoon  Cinnamon

  3           Tablespoons Cold Butter

• Let butter soften.  Grease an 8.5" x 4 1/2" pan (or a 9" x 5") on the bottom and 1" up the sides very well.  Don't grease all the way up; this prevents hard "shoulders". If you use parchment, grease it the same way.
• Measure ingredients.  Chop nuts.  Chop apples.  For topping, combine the first four ingredients; cut in butter until crumbly.
• In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk. Fold in apple and nuts. Pour into prepared loaf pan.  Sprinkle topping over batter. Bake at 350° for 55-60 minutes or until bread tests done. Cool in pan 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack. 

 Yield:  "1 Loaf” or about 16 slices