Cooking « The Violet Hours

Archive for the ‘Cooking’ Category

06
Sep
2010

Homemade applesauce!

Or “sauce” as Avalea calls it. Every time she goes to Nana’s house she gets “sauce”. She loves it. So I had a bunch of apples and figured I’d make some up. It’s really simple and tastes so much better than store bought. I got rave reviews from Ava and even Violet who had a couple little bites . And it doesn’t take anything. Apples, honey and cinnamon. You don’t even really NEED the honey and cinnamon, but depending on your tastes, you add them in. Simple as can be. I like knowing exactly what is in the food I give my family!

The recipe is:

4 apples, chopped
3 tbsp. honey
Cinnamon to taste
1/2 inch water

I did a super big batch. I probably used 25 apples lol. You also want to use the sweetest apples. The sweeter the apple, the less honey or sugar you need to use. Red Delicious, Gala and Fiji are all really sweet. I used a combo of the three. Sal says Gala’s taste more like “applesauce”.

So you start out peeling your apples.

After you get them all peeled, it makes it easier to core them and get out all the seeds and hard core bits.(The hubby was a great help here )

Next, chop up the apples really good. You can skip this step but I found they cook faster if you chop them smaller.Add them to a pot with about 1/2 inch water in the bottom. As they cook, the apples will release the water in them. When they are done cooking, make sure you drain of the juice! You can drink it as is or filter it through a coffee filter to make it clear and you have apple juice!

Drain the apples and place in a large bowl. Take your mixer and start at low, gradually moving up to high to get the consistency you desire. You can also use a food processor for this step, but I don’t have one of those so I made due lol.

Last, add in the honey and cinnamon to taste. Depending on the apples, you may not need to use any honey as they may be sweet enough. I only used about 3 tbl for the amount of apples I used and it was sweet enough! That’s it! Simple and sweet and voila! Applesauce! You can then go on to jar it and save. It also freezes really well. I think we’ll go to the farmers market soon and get a lot of apples and make up huge batches to can and put away.

Enjoy!!