Yummy apple sauce recipe
Andrew Norton
We picked a bushel of apples yesterday at Hubbard's Corey Lake Orchards. It was a gorgeous day and the slight breeze wafted the fresh smell of grapes growing next to the apple trees. If you have never smelled rows and rows of ripening grapes you won't really know what I am talking about. It's this intoxicating fragrant pure grape smell - sorry best I can do to describe something you smell ;). Anyway, I digress. This post is about an apple sauce recipe I just came up with in the kitchen this morning. With all of those apples (and the opportunity to pick a bunch more) we wanted to make up large batches of apple sauce and store them in the freezer in quart-size bags for easier storage (and defrosting). Rather than stand over a pot of sliced apples and stirring them occasionally I decided to come up with a crockpot recipe for apple sauce.
This is so simple, yet so delicious you won't want to buy mass manufactured jars of apple sauce again. I guarantee it.
What you need:
- 16 peeled and sliced and diced apples
- 3/4 to 1 Cup of sugar (or whatever your tastebuds appreciate - I like the natural sweetness of the apples to show through so I use less)
- 1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
- Sprinkle of Apple Pie Spice (semi-secret ingredient in my apple sauce)
To make this easier we bought an apple corer, slicer, peeler for $8 I believe. If you are going to want to be baking pies, making apple sauce, apple butter, etc. then you will want one of these. They work pretty slick and save tons of time and effort. I was able to buzz through 16 apples and dice them up in about 10-15 minutes with my four-year-old son "helping."
Put the diced apples in the crockpot, add the sugar, cinnamon apple pie spice, and stir it up. Set the crockpot on High and cook for 4 Hours. I opened the lid and mashed them up a bit with a wooden spoon about halfway through.
The batch is done now and I can't stop "tasting" the apple sauce. It is SO good. I think I'll put some hot apple sauce on a couple scoops of vanilla ice cream for further taste testing ;).
Have a Great Monday, and Happy Fall to All!