It’s fall here in Southern Indiana, and that means it’s apple time! Last Friday my wife and I went to Joe’s Orchard and picked some Fuji, Mutsu and Golden Delicious apples. Even though apples are available year round, I’m no fan of supermarket apples that have been sitting in storage for months then shipped all over the country. There’s nothing like a fresh picked apple for my tastes. And just when we got the kitchen counter cleared of tomatoes and other summer veggies, now it’s covered in apples!
apples, apples, apples (click on any image to enlarge)
Since we picked the apples, my wife has been making Waldorf Salad and Apple Crisps, and today I’m making a batch of applesauce. I’ll freeze some of the applesauce for use later. We use some in baking, and some we’ll just eat as is after thawing. I love eating applesauce for a snack, maybe sprinkled with a little cinnamon and some homemade granola (click here for my wife’s favorite granola recipe).
chopped apples for sauce
I’m using my own basic applesauce recipe, using cored, peeled and chopped apples with a little sugar and a stick of cinnamon (click here for the recipe). It yields about 2-1/2 cups of sauce, and can easily be doubled or tripled. Today’s batch is more like a double batch, and should give us plenty of applesauce for eating fresh in the next few days as well as some for freezing.
apples cooking down for sauce
We do our best to support our local growers when it comes to buying things we don’t grow ourselves. Next week we’ll probably make a trip across the river to Reid’s Orchard in Owensboro, Kentucky and pick up a few more apples. We’ll also be drying some, making apple leather, and generally eating them like crazy while they’re in season here.
Making apple leather starts out a lot like making applesauce, except we usually leave the skin on. After cooking the apples, we blend them until smooth then the mix goes on dehydrator sheets to dry into leather. My wife did a nice tutorial on making fruit leathers (click here for the tutorial). She is the Queen of the Dehydrator around here!
finished applesauce
Homemade applesauce is easy to make and oh so tasty. If you’ve never made applesauce, now is a great time to try it while apples are in season!
We just tasted the very first apples from our new orchard this last weekend. Although they were a common Golden Delicious (our universal pollinator tree), I can honestly say I’ve never tasted a Golden Delicious that was more sweet, with a CRISP texture! I agree, market apples are old, and as such I assumed the Goldens were mealy by nature. I will never buy another from a market again.
If you need an extra recipe for your apples, I strongly recommend our bread pudding with brandied figs recipe (with apples and walnuts). I do suggest you share it with company though 😉 I’m intrigued to try making fruit leather, I’ve never done that before! Off to peek at the tutorial!
I will try that bread pudding, though from the looks of it I may need to step up my exercise program! 😉 We do have some dried figs from last year that would be great in it.
The Golden’s we got were quite crisp and had a nice, complex flavor. They almost taste like a different apple when fresh vs those that have been in storage for months.
Yum! That just reminded me that last year I made apple cake from Heather’s recipe at A Tasteful Garden … excellent. We just picked up some apples on our way back from Rochester … love stopping at all the farms. I would love to get a dehydrator. Never heard of apple leather, but your sauce looks delicious!
I just checked out that recipe for apple cake – looks yummy!
the mutsus and fujis are amazing aren’t they? we got some from joe last week too.
we’ve been making batches of apple sauce too. i think i’ll dry some, thanks for the idea!
there is a beautiful cookbook, ‘apples for jam’ the apple bread in it is so good.