Applesauce

Well, I'm still working on using up all those apples. We have had lot of apple crisp the last week! My latest venture was trying another batch of applesauce, doesn't it look pretty in the jars? I think that's the biggest draw of canning for me--everything looks so neat in the jars. And we don't have much freezer space. Anyway,

Earlier this summer I made the more 'traditional' applesauce: quarter apples without peeling or coring into a big pot, and cook till tender. Put them a little at a time into a cone-shaped sieve (i.e. smusher) and mush it around with a wooden thing. (sorry for the blurry picture, I found it on ebay.)

Add sugar, put in containers, and freeze. This method was fine, just messy with the sieve, and all the apple discard working its way around and needing cleaned up. I also ended up with enough leftover juice for two batches of apple jelly.

This week's method: (mostly from here) Peel, core, cut apples into water with ascorbic acid (i.e. Fruit Fresh) to keep from browning. Cook apples, till tender, then throw them in the blender and in about 5 minutes all the applesauce is mushed! Fill jars, process in boiling-water canner. I guess it just depends which end of the process you want to spend all your time: Method 1--quick start, mushing takes forever. Method 2--cutting the apples takes forever (they were too small to use my 'spinner' (apple peeler/corer/slicer), but the blender part is SO fast!

I think I prefer the fast blending at the end. But not enough to make 77 quarts of applesauce, like one blogger I read. Seventy-seven. I was pleased with my 3 and a half quarts! :)

And my house had the most scrumptious smell...until the funnel cake episode.