Baked Apples

My family loves what we call baked apples.  I'm a cheater, though, and never have the time to actually bake an apple.  Instead, I cook them in the skillet with a little bit of water, a dash of sugar and some cinnamon until they are soft.  My kids will eat even the ickiest of dinners with the promise of "baked" apples for dessert.  Of course I had to figure out how to make this even easier, and with a twenty pound box of apples, I gave it a whirl! 

First step, give your apples a little rinse in cool water and remove the stickers.  Then I used my apple peeler, corer, slicer to peel them.  It doesn't do a great job of getting the peels off of the tops and bottoms of the apples, so I had to do those parts by hand, but it goes very quickly.  This picture is a granny smith, which I don't usually use for baked apples, but it's the only apple peeler/corer/slicer picture I had readily available, so imagine it's a juicy red apple!

Next I used my handy-dandy Pampered Chef Apple Wedger to core and slice the apple into eighths.  You need to watch when you do this because the cores aren't always in the center of the apples.  I try to compensate for this by putting the stem area in the middle of the wedger - even if it isn't the center of the apple. 

Here's where you have two choices - and I've done both, but have decided I prefer the second method. 

The first method is called HOT PACK.  To hot pack your apples make yourself a simple syrup (water and sugar, and I like to add cinnamon for the apples).  For about fifteen cups of water, I added four cups of sugar, but I like a VERY light syrup.  Stir the sugar in until dissolved and bring to a boil.  Put your apple wedges into the syrup for approximatley two minutes and the ladel into sterilized jars and process pints for 20 minutes, quarts for 25 in a hot water bath canner.  I did this method earlier this summer, and while the apples tasted yummy, they were more mushy, which I don't care for. 

This go around I did the second option - COLD PACK.  After wedging the apples, I packed them into warm, sterilized jars.  I packed those suckers in there as tight as I could, but left head space (about 1/2").  I cooked my syrup on the stove, and after the sugar dissolved fully and the syrup boiled for about one minute, I ladeled it over the apples in the jars, added clean flats and rings and processed in a hot water bath canner for 20 minutes for pints, 25 for quarts.  I think these turned out better because the apples are more crisp on the outside, but soft on the inside. 

From the twenty pound box of apples, I got 27 jars of baked apples and 13 jars of apple butter.  Not bad for $10!

Apple Butter

I stumbled upon a twenty pound box of apples a few weeks ago for only $10.  For us Alaskan folks, that's a helluva deal!  Of course I bought two.  But knowing my husband well enough to know that he'd flip his lid if I rolled up with forty pounds of apples, I gave one of the two boxes to one of my favorite domestic divas because I know she'd make magic with them!  As for me and my apples, we hurried home and got rinsed with nice cool water.

I chunked about a third of them up, peels, stems, cores, stickers, and all and threw them into a large pot with about an inch of water.  I covered the pot and let them simmer until they were soft when pricked with a fork.  Sorry I don't have more pictures of this process, I'm not used to this blogging, yet...

I ran the soft apples, juice and all, through my grinder/mill attachment on my Kitchen Aid.  I had a hand food mill that I used to use, but it would have taken about thirty minutes of hand cranking for a batch this size.  The Kitchen Aid attachment ran through them all in about ten minutes and my forearms didn't turn to Jell-O! 

At this point you have some choices, can it as applesauce, or keep going.  This time I kept going, but had I wanted applesauce, I would have put the still warm sauce into sterilized jars and processed in a water bath for about twenty minutes.  I decided to walk on the wild side...

I put the applesauce in the crock pot with about two cups of sugar and some cinammon, turned it on low and let 'er go for about twelve hours.

You're probably asking yourself, "what's up with the sticks, Bridget?"  I'm glad you asked.  I like a clean kitchen, and I like to keep it simple.  In order for the applesauce to cook down and thicken up, the condensation has to escape from the crockpot.  If you leave the lid off you'll have an applesauce splattered mess of a kitchen.  Instead, I put a couple of bamboo skewers across the crock and put the lid on top of those.  It contained all the mess, but let the moisture escape. 

Let your applesauce cook down 10-12 hours (I usually leave it overnight).  When you return you'll find there is about half as much as there was and it's a darker color.  At this point, I add enough applesauce to fill the crock back up to about an inch of the top, another cup of sugar, some more cinnamon and a teaspoon or two of vanilla.  Put the lid back on the skewers and let it cook for a few more hours.

While still warm, ladle into sterilized jars.  Process in hot water for twenty minutes for pints, 25 for quarts.  This batch yielded about 13 half pints!