Let me tell y’all a little story.
Once upon a time a food blogger bought two bushels of Golden Delicious apples. She made all manner of delectable apple foods and she lived happily ever after. The End.
Don’t they look pretty? And golden? And delicious?
The majority of my time last week was spent peeling, slicing, and cooking apples, with an end result of 40 pints of applesauce. The sauce turned out splendidly smooth and sweet (no sugar needed, since Golden Delicious are so sweet naturally).
I also made 3 half-pints of apple jelly. That was the practice batch since I’d never made jelly by myself before and they turned out great – pretty, golden, and solid. Then I made 12 half-pints of what I’ve decided to call ‘apple honey’. What is apple honey, you ask? Apple honey is created when you fail at making apple jelly and end up with an appley syrup with the consistency of runny honey. But it tastes like apples, thus apple honey. After that batch I decided to stick with the apple sauce, at least for the rest of these apples. Maybe next year I’ll be confident enough to try jelly again.
In addition to the apples that went into jars, there were plenty of other apple treats that made their way to the table while we had piles of fresh apples laying around. The first was an apple crisp, which I forgot to take a picture of, but here is the link to the recipe I love for Apple Crisp. To give you an idea of how good it is, this is the only form of apples the hubs will eat, and he consumes this with gusto. The only thing I do different from this recipe is use granulated sugar in the crumb topping instead of brown sugar. I just like it better that way, I don’t know why.
The other thing I have been enjoying (again no picture – sorry I’m a sloucher), is apple cinnamon pancakes. Super simple, just dump a big spoonful of applesauce in your pancake batter with some cinnamon and quick cooking oats. It is so, so, SO good.
One thing I did get a picture of was these yummy apple slice snacks.
Peel and core your apple and slice it into big circles. Slather on the peanut butter and sprinkle with mini chocolate chips and oatmeal. Yum! These were a huge hit with the little people for being tasty and just the right amount of messy, and with me for being so easy and healthy. Win, win.
Now I only have a few apples left, the most golden, sweetest looking ones, that I kept in reserve for munching. I have to admit to being pretty glad the canning is done. It is fulfilling work, but tiresome nonetheless. See ya again next year, Apples!