Applesauce & Apple Butter

This is going to be a lazy post (I apologize now). I dumpster a lot of apples in the late fall, and this year I also went apple picking at a local farm, so I've had a lot of use for apple preserving tactics. My favorites? Applesauce and apple butter. Applesauce is perfect for Thanksgiving or to pair with Hanukkah potato latkes. Or, y'know, applesauce is a pretty great snack by itself too.

The excellent part is this: when you get tired of your canned applesauce, you can make apple butter out of it! I love giving jars of apple butter to family during the holidays. It's thoughtful, homemade, and lasts about 1 year if you use proper canning technique. After you open the jar, it'll keep in the fridge for at least another 2-8 months, depending on how much sugar you put in it (since sugar is a preservative).

Here's my favorite recipe for making applesauce at home. You can tweak their recipe by adding lemon juice (also works as a preservative), keeping the rinds in there as you cook the apples down and removing them before you mash everything up:

http://www.pickyourown.org/applesaucewomill.htm



Now, apple butter is way easier than you'd think. It's literally just cooking applesauce down at a very low temperature for a very long time until there's very little moisture left in it. You can add extra spices and more sugar during this process too, depending on how tart or sweet your applesauce was to begin with. There's two methods to achieve apple butter: 1) cook it on the stove at a low heat or 2) use a crock pot at very low heat.

The crock pot is a little safer, since you have to leave it on while you're presumably at work or otherwise living your life. Here's good instructions on how to make apple butter. You can futz with the proportions to make more or less, depending on how much applesauce you start out with:

http://www.pickyourown.org/applebutter.htm


Something I like to do when I'm giving tiny jars of apple butter to people is spice them up a little. For pretty much all home canning, you're using jars with 2 pieces to the lid - a ring and a flat part. If you have some fabric scraps (a cool old t-shirt works fine), you can put the piece of fabric in between the flat part of the lid and the ring, like this:


Now you don't need wrapping paper!

Other apple ideas are apple juice (which comes out of making a lot of applesauce) or apple cider.

Ingredients not donated or dumpstered: spices

Less Lazy, More Yummy - Apple Danish

I know I recently made an apple post, but this recipe blows that one out of the water, and is much more versatile in its uses. The last recipe is for when you're lazy and it's late. This recipe is for when you are going to bitch-slap breakfast into next week.

I get apples a lot when I dumpster. Many grocery stores will throw out a whole bag of apples when only one is bruised, wasting up to 10 good apples. I say, why let one bad apple ruin the bunch? There's a lot of creative things you can do with them (apple chips, chutney, apple butter, juice, applesauce, adding cheese/peanut butter for a snack, etc - you'll definitely see more renditions of what to do with apples in the future).

Given all the apple options, making something sweet is kind of a cop-out, and generally unhealthy. Plus, apple desserts rely on using many of your pantry ingredients (which last almost forever) for comparatively few dumpstered ones (a bad ratio for the dumpster diver or penny saver).

Still, this shit's delicious. It's way better than any danish I've gotten at the store. You can eat it for breakfast on-the-go, a snack, or dessert for a large dinner party or pot luck (I'm saving mine for an upcoming road trip). This recipe makes a full 11" x 17" pan of danish, so it'll last you a long time, which is nice, considering it takes about an hour to make. Just pop it in the toaster oven to reheat.

APPLE DANISH

Ingredients:

Crust (you can buy pre-made pastry crust, too):
- 3 cups flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup shortening (I used vegetable shortening, but butter is fine too).
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 egg yolk, beaten (If you don't know how to separate eggs, let an adorable French man in this video teach you how) - make sure to keep the egg white for later.

Filling:
- Around 6 cups thinly sliced, peeled, & cored granny smith apples (I think I used 6 granny smiths and 1.5 gala apples).
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- Sprinkle of nutmeg
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1 egg white, beaten

Glaze (Optional):
- 1.5 cups powdered sugar
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 1-2 tsp vanilla (put in one, then if it tastes too sugary, add another splash)
- 3 tbsp milk

For Crust:
Mix flour, salt, cut in shortening (I used a pastry cutter, but a whisk or fork will work fine).
Combine milk and egg yolk and add to flour mixture.
Roll out half the mixture on an 11 x 17 inch pan (Now, I don't have a rolling pin, but this doesn't stop me from being a pastry mama - you can use anything round to roll out your crust - I used a to-go coffee mug. In the past I've used wine or beer bottles too).

For Filling:
Arrange apples evenly in the crust, like this:
Combine sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then sprinkle over the apples.
Dot evenly with butter.

Roll out remaining pastry and place it over the cinnamon mixture. A cool, easy way to do this is to roll out the crust on saran wrap (which is the same width as your pan anyway), then just flip the whole thing over on top of your pastry and lift up the saran wrap.

Next, brush pastry with egg white - be careful not to let it pool up anywhere or else you'll get a cooked egg part, which tastes really funky and looks ugly.

Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.

For (Optional) Glaze:
Mix the powdered sugar, salt, vanilla and milk together.
Spread on warm Apple Danish.

So, here it is without glaze:
And with:
Garnish with fresh or cooked apple if you're feeling feisty and want to show off:
IF YOU GLAZE THIS, KEEP IT REFRIGERATED SO IT LASTS.

p.s. I know this is so wrong, but my cat liked it too:
Items not dumpstered or donated (A LOT. Darn.): Flour, salt, shortening, sugar, powdered sugar, milk, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, salt, vanilla

A Midnight Snack

Sometimes, right before bed, I'll get insane cravings for sweets. Murderous cravings. Nothing can stand in my way.

It must be something about the witching hour, because I usually don't even LIKE sweets all that much (I'm more of the "let's have some fruit and cheese for dessert" kind of gal). Still, when the cravings hit me, they hit hard.

This is a sweet, mildly healthy snack I made on a cold winter's night that gave me just enough sugar to go comatose and sleep for 8 hours (and it used up some apples that were on the verge of going bad)!

GOOEY HOT CINNAMON APPLES


Ingredients:

- 3 small "kid" apples (pretty much any kind of apple other than red delicious should work)
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tbsp butter

Melt butter in the bottom of a pan.
Add sugar & spices, blending thoroughly.
Throw in quartered apples.
Keep heat on medium-low until apples are soft and your mixture is gooey, stirring occasionally.

FUN FACT: This is basically the beginning step to every apple pastry filling recipe.

OTHER FUN FACT: I begin volunteering at a local food bank starting TOMORROW. Look for a report soon.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Butter, sugar, spices