Breakfast Apple Pie

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe."

- Carl Sagan

It's 7 o'clock at night and there's nothing to eat! I thought. I needed ideas. I wanted something different. I had been craving fruit, but the only fresh fruit in the house was a few lone apples, almost past their prime.

chopping the walnuts

Luckily I picked up this peculiar cookbook from the 80's entitled, "Where's Mom Now That I Need Her- Surviving Away From Home." It was still sitting on the counter, not yet put away in it's place on the shelf, since I had just purchased it a few days earlier.

apples down, starting to add the topping

 This is a cute and clever cookbook meant for those just moving away from home with hardly an idea how to cook, or take care of themselves for that matter.

ready for the oven

The book covers a lot. In addition to being a cookbook, it teaches you things like how to read labels and how to save on energy costs. It even lets you know how to make everything from drain cleaner to ant killer with every day household ingredients.

The recipes are simple, as they should be. But not boring, like I anticipated.

Our free range chickens on the left sharing a nibble with a deer on the right. In the middle is the windmill my husband made.

This recipe for example. What a splendid idea! Breakfast apple pie. I love it! I did change so much about the recipe that it is no longer recognizable. Theirs has biscuit mix, mine doesn't. Mine has oats, theirs doesn't, and the list goes on.

I could only hope that it would turn out well with all the changes. Yes, hurray! It did. Very well indeed. It's a moist nutty cake with oats and brown sugar, topped with apples and cinnamon. This would be great served at brunch with other savory items like an omelet and some bacon.

Or eat it alone as your dinner like I did. Still delicious, easy and heartwarming.

Breakfast Apple Pie

General idea from "Where's Mom Now That I Need Her" by Betty Rae Frandsen, Kathryn J. Frandsen and Kent P. Frandsen

This recipe by me, Melissa aka The Alchemist

Ingredients

For the pie

1 egg

4 Tablespoons cooking oil, (vegetable oil, or grape seed oil, something with a neutral taste)

1 cup (237 ml) milk

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 cup (75 g.) brown sugar

1 cup (100 g.) flour

1/2 cup oats (50 g.) (quick or old fashioned, don't use instant)

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2  tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup (50 g.) chopped walnuts, or pecans - unsalted


For the Topping


2 large apples - peeled and sliced

4 Tablespoons brown sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

2 Tablespoons butter cut in small pieces


Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, 190 degrees Celsius, or Gas Mark 5.

In a large bowl beat the egg with a whisk. Add the oil, milk and vanilla and whisk together. Add the brown sugar and whisk again. In another medium size bowl add the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt and whisk together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix with a whisk or a wooden spoon until blended. Stir in the chopped nuts.

Mix together the brown sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl for the topping, set aside.

Grease a 9 inch pie plate, and have your apples sliced and topping ready.

Pour the pie batter into the greased pie plate. Add the apple slices decoratively slightly overlapping in a circle and then arrange more in the middle.  Sprinkle with the cinnamon and brown sugar topping. Dot the butter in small pieces around the top of the apples.

Bake in the preheated oven for 45 - 50 minutes, until a knife poked in the center comes out clean.

This is best served warm the same day it's made.