t`s been a year of preserving for the can jammers – a massive thanks to Tigress who has been an awesome hostess – I can`t imagine the work she goes through every month to wrap up our monthly adventures and I plan to spend a lot of time on her site this year as the seasons cycle back from whence we`ve came.
This recipe is something we rarely do – it`s a near invention of ingredients. We`ve taken a proven recipe for applesauce (that I know to be `by the book`) and supplemented some of the fresh apples and swapped them with ones we dehydrated. As our recipe called for 12 pounds of apples, we dehydrated 3 of them. This reduced their water content but should keep the rest in check. I am more than confident (I wouldn`t eat it or feed it to my family otherwise) but thought I should be open in case you try the same.
I essentially made a normal applesauce and added the browned dehydrated apple pieces during the last 15 minutes of the simmering process. This hydrated the apple chunks (essentially infusing apple-juice) into the dried apples. This will add to their sweetness, pull any juice from the sauce (making this more similar to a barely cooked apple butter) and add a lot of texture to the final product. The resulting product is so thick that air pockets on the side of the jar remain long after an inverted jar is placed back to it`s normal resting condition.
This apple stuff has the thickness of a butter with the texture of a sauce – and, of course there are those chewy chunks of dehydrated apple. It is meant as a dessert, to add to baking or to cobblers or to be eaten with a small bit of table cream as a dessert.
Here`s the process:
- Peel and core 9 pounds of apples. Slice small (I cheated with a food processor).
- Add 4.5 cups water. It will be watery.
- .25 cup (plus 2 tablespoons) lemon juice
- 1 cup honey
- 5 or 6 cinnamon sticks.
Cook all of the above until you have a thick apple sauce. Prep your jars before adding:
6. Dehydrated apples (3 pounds before dehydrating).
Cook for 15-20 minutes before placing in pint jars and processing for 20 minutes in a water bath.
That`s all there is to making this lovely stuff!
