New food blog/recipe/idea: Applesauce

I've been tweeting about the glut of apples from our tree and that of our neighbours this autumn (their house has been empty for the last 8 months and I had permission to help myself), and this is one of the things I did with them: Apple sauce. There'll be another blog along shortly regarding apple and plum chutney.

I had a previous applesauce session using about 4kg of windfalls from our tree which involved loganberries and not a lot of sugar and I think I learned a couple of lessons.

Note: Our tree is a child of the one next door. It grew from a windfall about 15 years ago and was nurtured by my dad, and transplanted about 10 feet to be out of its parent's shade. The apples are something like a cross between a Cox's Pippin and a Braeburn. The flesh is very white and very juicy, but really quite tart and barely edible raw. (Certainly eating more than one a day is guaranteed tummy upset, or worse!)


The word "recipe" for this apple sauce really is overstating the case!

1. Core, peel and roughly chop up 4KG raw apples (I left the peels on about half of them to add more textrue to the sauce) and put in large heavy-bottomed cooking pot.


2. Add about a cupful of water (these apples are very juicy and the water's only there to stop sticking/burning during the early cooking), 500g of sugar (I used about half that in my previous batch and it wasn't enough) - I'd've preferred all brown but I only had a little so I made it up with white - and a few cinnamon sticks to taste (in my case, 1 large stick per kilo of apples plus another couple). Note that my large cooking pot was too small to start with so I had some cooking in a second smaller pot. When cooking this kind of thing, NEVER fill the pot more than 2/3 to 3/4 full because the sauce is going to spit and bubble while stirring!


3. Turn on heat and as soon as it starts to boil, cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally until softened (about 15 minutes). (About halfway through, the volume had reduced enough to pour the contents of the smaller pan into the large one)


4. Leave to cool, remove cinnamon sticks and pour into plastic containers with lids. Freeze. It should keep for up to 3 months in a domestic freezer. Use for cakes, desserts or whatever takes your fancy! My 4kg of raw apples yielded 2x 1litre ice-cream containers plus 1.2litre ready-made soup containers (880ml + 4ooml).