How to Cook Potatoes of the Trees

As I mentioned last week, I went apple-picking and as a result found my kitchen table graced with a large bowl of very picturesque apples. Trouble is, I don't like apples, so that bowl of fruit was, for me, a lifetime supply of mediocre menu filler. That bowl was a Herculean task with my name on it: get through all these apples. Go on, I dare you. I swear, I heard it taunting me whenever I walked by it. I knew there was no way I was going to get through them all before they went bad. I gamely tried an apple a day for while – I felt very virtuous and healthy but I had to stop halfway through my third apple. I'd reached my limit. Potatoes of the trees are just not my thing, no matter how optimistically I try to change that.

That still left me with apple-overload. The solution came in two forms. First, my friend MKA assures me that freezing them is a way to save apples for pie-making purposes later. So I spent hours peeling and chopping apples so I could store them in the freezer. I suspect there will be a Domestic Goddess Apple Pie in my wintry future. Second, I tried my friend Miss Krafty's Apple-Chocolate Chip Cake recipe. I made it twice, and the second time I made it I really found the perfect combination for my apple-indifferent taste buds. I print it here for your own enjoyment, in case you too find your kitchen is barricaded behind a red abundance of apples and you don't know what to do with them all.

Apple Chocolate Chip Cake

2 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
¾ c. oil
1-2 Tbsp milk
1-2 Tbsp melted butter, cooled
2 eggs
1½ cups chopped apple
1½ cups chocolate chips
½ cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 325ºF. Butter and flour a tube pan. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Mix wet ingredients together in a small bowl. Add oil mixture to flour mixture and beat only until completely mixed. Stir in apple, chips and nuts. Spoon mixture (it will be pretty thick) into pan and bake for 1 hour.

I have to say, it's pretty tasty.

Miss Krafty's version didn't have milk, butter, salt or nuts, and in fact called for a whole 3 cups of apple with only ½ a cup of chocolate. Lunacy. Sheer lunacy. It tasted WAY too much of apple that way. But if you're a fan, feel free to tinker with the recipe – it can take it. Miss K also says she never bothered to make it in a tube pan, so go crazy. Use any pan you want. Just don't try to use real potatoes.