And so, we wrap up the little loaves in aluminum foil and pack them in our basket and we hit the road.

It’s a mobile tea time. Because this week we are sharing it with friends and family. We visit the library, and the friends we don’t see much, and we drop off apple bread and a little good cheer.

It’s becoming a tradition now. Every year. It’s becoming one of my very favorite things.

Apple Bread

Adapted from New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant

1 cup light olive oil

1/2 cup applesauce

2 cups brown sugar

3 eggs

2 cups whole spelt flour

1 cup white spelt flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cardamom

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp vanilla

3 tablespoons almond milk

3 cups chopped apples

1 cup chopped walnuts

sesame seeds

We double and even triple this recipe and it works great. This bread also freezes really well (for later distribution).

We like to make this in mini loaf pans, although round cake pans work really well when we are making it to keep.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use coconut or olive oil to grease pans and sprinkle with sesame seeds to coat.

In a very large bowl, combine oil and brown sugar and mix well. Add apple sauce, eggs, vanilla and almond milk and combine well.

In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients including flours, baking soda, baking powder and spice. Add dry ingredient mix to the wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Add chopped apples and nuts and stir in.

Fill cake pans 2/3 of the way full.

Cook small cake pans for 20 to 25 minutes or until bread is cooked through. Cook in round cake pans for up to 35 minutes or until knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Happy Fall!

There’s something so warm and cozy about baking bread — the way it warms the kitchen; the way it makes your house smell like no candle or spray freshener ever could.

And the ingredients in this Maple, Oatmeal and Wheat Bread from Mixing Bowl Kids are all so wholesome and delicious, they give you something else to feel good about.

We substituted white spelt for the all-purpose flour and whole spelt for the whole wheat flour to make this bread wheat-free.

It was perfect paired with yesterday’s homemade nut butter!

Friday tea is becoming a nice new routine around here.

It seems like we all need a little something special to celebrate the start of the weekend.

And so, we make a little tea and a treat. And take a deep breath because the work of the week is almost done, and the work of the weekend is almost here!

This week, we made these amazing Peanut Butter Cookies from 101 Cookbooks. Heidi Swanson and her blog and cookbooks are wonderful resources for healthy, whole food recipes and ideas.

Her cookbook Super Natural Cooking is one of my favorites — and often spends months at a time on my kitchen counter never making its way back to its proper home on the bookshelf.

These cookies are so delicious. But I have to show extreme self-control because the batter is really, really good too. It is egg-free, so a little taste or two won’t hurt.

That’s the other cool thing about these cookies — there are only six ingredients, and they are ingredients we almost always have on hand.

We used to the spelt flour option, and kept a close eye on them so they were still chewy in the middle. Yum. The perfect way to start the weekend!