Crockpot Applesauce

Yum!

It's October 1st. Which means fall has officially started. I should mention that I love all things fall-related. I'm from Massachusetts originally - the home of Salem witches and some seriously awesome foliage. As any native Mass-hole will tell you, fall is the best season of the year. A time where pumpkin and apple flavors are crammed into every food-related item you can imagine. Which is why apple picking is a must on my fall to-do list. As is pumpkin picking - but we'll get to that at a later date.

A few weekends ago, my girlfriend Jessica was visiting, and we decided to head to Lohr's Orchard to do some apple picking. We picked some of the biggest apples I've ever seen. EVER. Why is it that people always pick more apples than they'll ever eat? That happened to me & Jess. After 2 weeks of eating apples, I decided it was time to do something with what I had left.

Check out the size of that apple on Jess's head!

I stumbled across a crockpot applesauce recipe that seemed very simple, and I happened to have all ingredients on hand. I figured I'd give it a shot.

The recipe I worked off of can be found here. It looks like she grabbed this recipe from Skinnytaste - one of my favorite places to find new recipes!

Ingredients:

• 7 large apples* (enough to fill a crockpot) of any variety, peeled, cored, & diced
• 1 strip of lemon peel (I used a vegetable peeler)
• 1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 5 tsp light brown sugar (unpacked)

How to:

• Combine all ingredients in your crockpot
• Cover and cook on low for 6 hours. Stir periodically

How easy is that?

*Keep in mind, my apples were enormous. The original recipe called for 8 medium apples, or 20 small apples. As long as you have enough to fill up your crockpot, you should be good to go!

Your apples will reduce down to a delicious blend of apples & cinnamon as they cook. I found that the consistency of the applesauce was perfect - there were small apple pieces that gave the applesauce a great texture. I used a mixture of granny smith and macintosh apples. In the future, I'd use a less tart apple than granny smith - my applesauce has a little bite to it. But overall, this recipe turned out close to perfect. And best of all - the house smelled amazing all day! 

Here's the finished product. Enjoy!