Up until a few weeks ago, I had never made my own applesauce. I think I placed it on a pedestal next to canning. Lots of work, lots of dishes, not worth it. Then my favorite blogger, Skip, mentioned that Martha Stewart has his recipe on her website. I clicked over, and it has two steps. Two? That doesn’t sound anything like canning in terms of difficulty. In fact, the most difficult thing about applesauce is peeling the apples, but I tell myself it’s manual labor (which equals more calories burned) and don’t mind the work. If you have the space you can always get one of these apple peelers my mom used when I was a kid.

In case you didn’t believe me, I took some step-by-step picture to show you how easy this is.

1. Gather up your apples. No need to wash them because you are peeling them anyway. Or if you are my mom you will wash them because you are crazy about germs and such. (Love you mom!)

2. Peel your apples.

3. Core your apples and but them into chunks. (As you can see above, I used the apple corer to do this in one genius move.)

4. Dump in a pot of boiling water. When they are fork-tender, drain.

5. Juice several oranges. I used 4 the first time, but only had two the second time. The amount of orange juice will determine both how runny it is, and how sweet it is (without sugar).

6. Next, dump in your brown sugar and your apple pie spice. Or you can just use cinnamon, but I like using apple pie spice because it feels more like I’m eating dessert.

7. Mash with a potato masher.

8. Store in the fridge.

Applesauce with Orange Juice

Adapted from Skip’s Homemade Applesauce

About 10 apples
Juice from 2-4 oranges
1/4 cup brown sugar, add more as desired
2 teaspoons apple pie spice or cinnamon

Start a pot of water to boil, while that is working peel, core, and cut up your apples (quartering them is fine).

Boil until fork goes right through. Drain. Dump into a bowl and mash together with orange juice, sugar, and apple pie spice. Add more sugar to reach the amount of sweetness you desire.

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This recipe is crazy flexible. In fact, you can vary every single ingredient to figure out the kind of taste you want. More apples, less sugar, more spices, make it runnier with more orange juice. You can also make this with skins on, and feed it through the food processor until it’s smooth (which would increase the fiber), but I like the slight chunkiness that comes from gently mashing peel-free boiled apples.

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