Cooking: First Applesauce

 

We have a beautiful (Gravenstein I believe) apple tree in our back yard and it suddenly started bearing fruit about four years ago after years and years with no apples. Now we have more than we can handle. The tree thinks it's harvest all summer, dropping apples to the ground, and sadly we rarely seem to get to them before the bugs or lawnmower do. This year we've tried to do better and have started early with a couple family apple harvests.

Audrey has really enjoyed being lifted into the tree to snap an apple from the branch and always wants to relay the apples we pick from our hands to the red bucket we used to collect them.

I made a batch of apple sauce (my first of the season) the way I really love it: chunky with the skins on and with lemon juice a bit of sugar and some cinnamon. I honestly tastes like Christmas or apple pie.

I didn't use a recipe, but in a big, deep pot, I put about an inch of water in the bottom of the pan, added a generous amount of lemon juice (I don't know--a bunch of tablespoons probably), added maybe a cup of white sugar and then cooked on medium high until it bubbled. Then I turned the heat to medium low to avoid burning, and stirring occasionally, waited until the apples became tender and fell apart, incorporating the liquid. Yum!

 

I'm going to try and freeze this and then thaw to serve at upcoming birthday brunch. We'll see if that works--haven't tried it before, but I will have too many other things to do at the last minute for her party and would like to have some applesauce to go along with our farm/apple harvest theme.