Apple Sauce

Steve and I met yesterday after I got off of work, at his parents house.  They have two apple trees that they offered us the apples from.  One of the trees was a crab apple tree, and it was loaded.  It was not long before we were thinking we should have brought a tarp or large blanket, as the apples fell from the tree when we shook it.  The other tree was loaded with a larger variety but no one was sure of what kind.  The larger apples were not quite ripe, they could us a couple more weeks.  

We didn't even come close to picking all of the apples that hung on the trees, we will be sure to be going back in the weeks to follow.  Once we got home last night  it was a bit to late to start the big project of making something from the apples. 

I started the task of cleaning and sorting the crab apples this morning.  They are very ripe, we maybe should have tackled that tree a week earlier. I found an old recipe for Apple Jelly, in a Kerr cook book from the early 1970's.  This recipe is very basic,     Wash and core all of the apples but do not peel them.  Remove and discard all of the faulty parts, cover with water in a pot large enough to handle the amount you are going to cook at the time.  Cook until the apples are soft and strain, out the juice.  To this I was to add 3/4 cup of sugar to every 1 cup of juice.  I thought, this seems like a lot of sugar so I thought I would try to combined the two different types of apples, reduce the amount of water I used and it would maybe make it thicker, and maybe the two flavors of the apples would compliment each other enough to not need as much sugar. 

I cleaned and put into a pot enough apples to fill a grocery bag, before I remembered I could by pass a lot of work by just running the apples through our juicer then make jelly.  Oh well to late now, they are already in the pot cooking on the stove. 

The apples cooked until they were soft, I mashed them up  with a potato masher to help them along, I then ran them through a sieve.  I ended up with 9 cups of sauce, to the sauce I added 2 teaspoons of ground Cinnamon and 2 cups of sugar.    The sauce has a mildly sweet and sour flavor with the hint of cinnamon.  Look at that rich color, it looks great in the jars.   It is going to be so awesome to have during those winter months.

I also use apple sauce when I bake in place of some of the fat in a recipe.  It is put into cakes, cookies, breads, waffles and more.  The amount of sugar you use in a recipe can be reduced as well because of the sweet flavor of the apple sauce.  You will have to give it a try and share what you think.

Take note that if you go for a drive and see apples just hanging on a tree, without being tended to.  Knock on the door of the person that owns it,  quite often they will give you the
apples for free if they are not going to use them or don't have them already spoken for.  Sometime you can offer to pay for them or even offer the person some of what you plan to make with them.  You may find that the person owning the tree is elderly and is no longer able to tend it, in this case they are more then willing to let you pick them so they go to use rather then being wasted.