FALL APPLE PICKING & BAKING
Fall Apple Picking & Baking
Last week was such a beautiful fall week that we went apple picking. The owner of our property before us planted 2 apple trees. They are haralson apples and make the best pies and apple sauce! When we moved in they were still very small but over the years have gotten to be perfect size. We often get asked what we do to our trees to keep the bugs out of the apples and amazingly we have never had to do anything! We don't spray them, the apple just grow big and beautiful and bug free and we are so grateful for that!
We ended up picking 5 big tubs of apples!! It was a good year for the apple harvest.
Knowing that apple day is a big undertaking, we wanted to wait for Grandma Sue to get here as she was spending a few days with us last week! So, a couple days into her visiting we got into the baking! On our list was
- Apple Pies
- Apple Crisp
- Apple Sauce
- Dried Apples
We gathered all of the ingredients and we started with Apple Crisp.
Here is the recipe! I added a few notes to the recipes in case you want to end up freezing most of them like we do...
I found this amazing attachment that attaches to your kitchen aid mixer that peels the apples for you! It's like an apple core peeler but you don't need to spin it yourself. It saves so much time!
We ended up with 20 Crisps/Pies for me and 12 smaller crisps for my mom!
Next is dried apples!
We just sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon and pop them in the dehydrator! So super easy and we may or may not of eaten a whole entire tray once they came out of the dehydrator! ;) We bought the dehydrator a few years ago and it works great! This is the one we have. We also use it to make jerky from all of Ryan's wild game:)
Apple Sauce!
I'll share the recipe we used.
2 big pots and 2 crock pots. I freeze these in gallon freezer bag and freeze them we don't can them. They lay nice and flat in the bags which is nice for storage in the freezer.
Ingredients
-3 1/2 pounds apples - peeled, cored, and quartered
-1 cup water
-1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar, or less to taste
-3 tbsp. lemon juice or less to taste
-1 cinnamon stick (I would add ground cinnamon If you like more of a cinnamon taste)
1/2 teaspoon salt
Once it boils simmer for 20 minutes and blend with blender, immersion blender or potato masher.
Another year of apples in the books and now we will get to enjoy the fruits of our labor, literally:) all winter long. The best part!
