Mini Apple Coffe Cakes

I had some apples that needed to be used pretty soon and wanted to make something yummy with them - more specifically I wanted to make this apple cake from MrsPresley's blog Good Eats and Sweet Treats, but when I opened my refrigerator, I was dismayed to find that I only had one stick of butter left to make a cake that called for 3 (yes 3) sticks. Oh, and I also only had one egg. So I had to scratch that idea. I also had to scratch any idea of making something that called for eggs because I needed that one egg to make cookies for a friend.

Enter my Dining on a Dime Cook Book. As a cook on a budget, I love this cookbook because it has tips to save money at the grocery store along with simple recipes that won't break the bank. In there is where I found a simple coffee cake recipe that had much fewer ingredients than I have seen in a recipe. I followed the recipe exactly except with the addition on chunks of apples. Oh, and the fact that mine was cooked in mini loaf pans in a toaster oven instead of an 8x8 pan in a real oven :) I changed the order of the directions slightly to make more sense.

Apple Coffee Cake

• 2 cups flour (I used half whole wheat)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 rounded Tbsp shortening
• 1 cup milk
• 1 medium diced Apple (I used Gala)

Preheat oven to 350. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and shortening. Set aside 3/4 cup of the mixture for the topping. Add milk to remainder of flour mixture and mix until smooth. Pour batter into an 8x8 buttered pan.

• 2 Tbsp butter, melted
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 3 Tbsp brown sugar

Combine 3/4 cup of reserved flour mixture with above ingredients and sprinkle over the top of batter. Bake for 30 minutes.

This recipe filled two mini loaf pans and also made 4 muffins. These were really yummy and were had just the right amount of crumbliness (is that a word?) Despite the minimal list of ingredients, they packed a good flavor. Plus Justin said we could consider it healthy since they had whole wheat and fruit in them :)