Apples!

I broke into the case of apples I got thru Bountiful Baskets this weekend. They are ambrosia apples and let me tell you, they taste heavenly! Get it, ambrosia... food of the gods...taste heavenly...Anywasy, they even look pretty.

I made, apple sauce, apple juice, crunchy apple strings, apple leather and will soon be making apple butter.
I used the apple-peeler-corer-slicer to deconstruct about 1/2 the case.

The parts with out a peel went into the applesauce pot, the peels went into a bowl and the cores and apple pieces with peels still left on, went into another pot.

Apple sauce:
Sliced, cored and peeled apples cut in half
4 cinnamon sticks
Peel of one lemon
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

Cook on low until soft, 3 hours or so. Then remove the lemon peel and cinnamon sticks and blend until smooth. I have an immersion blender so that's what I use but a blender will work fine as well. My kid's don't like chunky applesauce so I have to blend it smooth and that's also the reason I peel the apples but it's not required. Once it's cooked and blended it reduces down by at least half so be sure to use a large pot. Be sure to taste it to make sure it's sweet enough to your liking. This batch didn't need any sugar but I have added up to 1 cup of white or brown sugar in previous batches.

Crunchy Apple Strings:
Apple peels
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 tbsp ginger, nutmeg or cinnamon
3 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp butter

Toss the peels with the remaining ingredients then spread out as best you can on parchment lined baking pans.

Don't worry about cutting the strings; once they're baked they'll crumble into smaller parts anyways. Cook on the lowest setting in your oven for 5 hours or until crunchy, not chewy. I crunched them up so they were littler bits and will use them as a snack for the kids or on salads.

Apple Juice:
Since I don't have a juicer and didn't want to waste any part of the leftover apples after I peeled, cored and sliced them. I decided to put all the "bits" in a sauce pot with 2 cups water and simmer on low for several hours to extract the juice. I left the seeds, stem and such on it as I was only going to extract the juice anyways. It was a bit bland and I didn't want to add any sugar so I put in about 1/4 lb of red seedless grapes.

Once that all stewed, I poured it into a strainer covered with cheese cloth sitting over a bowl. I used my potato masher and smooched out all the juicy goodness, then twisted up the cheese cloth and squeezed the rest out. Because it does not have any preservatives, it won’t last long so I froze some of it in ice cube trays for adding to club soda or ice water later down the line.

(Yes, I have heart shaped ice cube trays, aren't they cute!)


Apple leather:
Spread a thin layer of apple sauce out on a non-stick pan or in a circle on a parchment lined baking pan. Cook on low for 5-6 hours until chewy but not wet.

I'll post the apple butter recipe when I make some later in the week. I also plan on making several loafs of apple bread, apple coffee cake and apple bran muffins. Yum!