Applesauce

The way that I always know when fall is in the air is I can make my whole entire house smell SO good without burning a single scented candle. I truly have an obsession with the smell of apples cooking.
We always start off the fall season by buying a bushel of apples from a produce stand or orchard. That is immediately followed by making applesauce in the crock pot and having applesauce with homemade biscuits for breakfast the following morning. *ahhhhhhh* This is my  happy place 🙂
Once you make a batch of applesauce you can truly go with that same applesauce in hundreds of recipes. (I’ll get into that later in the week a little more).
Here is how I make crock pot applesauce:

• 4 lbs of peeled, cored and chopped apples (I like to mix different kinds of apples for this–a tart with a sweet)
• juice of one lemon
• 3/4 cup of apple cider or water
• sugar (amount to be determined by taste)
• ground cinnamon

Place the apples, lemon juice and cider in a 6 quart crock pot. Turn to low and cook for 6 hours. After 6 hours, take a potato masher and mash the softened apples. At this point I taste the apple sauce. If it needs sugar, I usually start with a quarter cup of sugar, stir it in and then taste again. If I feel it still needs sugar I always add it in quarter cup increments until it tastes like I think it should. If you like a chunkier applesauce you probably won’t want to cook it any longer. If you like a softer applesauce you will want to put the lid back on and cook on low for an additional two hours. If you like it very smooth you can put it into a blender (only filling the blender half full at a time) and puree it to the desired consistency. Before serving or preserving applesauce I add 1 – 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon to the entire crock pot of applesauce (of course stirring it to incorporate). I love it served fresh and warm, but it’s also good cold or room temperature.

*NOTE* As the apples cook down the crock pot will not be as full as it was when you first added the apples. They reduce in size as they cook and as you stir and mash them.