Vegan Chunky Apple Spice Bread

A week ago I was able to have 5 kid-free hours to myself, and do you know what I did? I got in the kitchen and baked! Y’all, this season of life – both the actual Christmas season and this season with young kiddos – makes it hard to do anything but the bare minimum in the kitchen sometimes. It’s not a complaint, it’s just my reality. But I will say that having a lot of kitchen alone time last week felt really nice and I was (am) so grateful to be able to just get my hands dirty without any distractions.

 

Back in my olden days of blogging I could make huge scattered messes, cook and photograph simultaneously, blast music or TV shows and basically just be a giant mess for a few hours without any repercussions. These days if I do that there’s for sure going to be a poopy diaper (reminds me that I need to work on potty training…), a fight, a meltdown, and probably a request for 80 TV show changes. We live in kind of a love-packed circus over here!

 

During my 5-hour kitchen stampede I knew I wanted to make something for the boys to snack on that included some of the apples I accidentally over-bought, and an apple bread came to mind. I always loved apple muffins or pancakes that had chunks of sweet apple in them, and so for me it was a no-brainer. If you don’t love apple in bread this one may not be for you – consider yourself warned! Truthfully the reason this is vegan is because I only had chia seeds (no eggs) and almond milk on hand, but I love the texture it came out with and I’m always down with adding extra omega-3’s to my family’s tummies!

 

The house smelled like an apple-scented dream while this was baking in the oven, and it made me even more excited about one day being able to make things like this with my boys. They do love to help bake, although their definition of help is a bit skewed sometimes, and it’s almost like magic for them to see how the things that go in the oven come out looking and smelling so different! So I guess when I think about it the olden days were nice, but the new days are getting pretty stinking fun too. Now if I could just get on the potty training… 😉

 

Enjoy!

VEGAN CHUNKY APPLE SPICE BREAD

Makes one 9- x 5-inch loaf

Ingredients:

• 2 small sweet apples, peeled, cored and cut into small cubes
• 2 tablespoons chia seeds + 6 tablespoons of water
• 1/3 cup almond or coconut milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1-1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Grease a 9- x 5-inch loaf pan. Set aside.
3. In a small bowl combine the chia seeds and water. Let sit for 3-5 minutes until thick.
4. After the chia seeds have soaked, combine the chia mixture with the almond milk, sugar and vanilla extract and whisk until smooth.
5. Sift in the flour, baking soda and pumpkin pie spice.
6. Add the apples on top of the flour, then lightly fold everything together until just combined. This allows you to flour the apples (keeps them from sinking to the bottom of the loaf) without dirtying another pan.
7. The batter will be thick. Spoon and then spread it into the prepared loaf pan.
8. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
9. Enjoy!