My son Loves apples, it is his favorite fruit (so not like me!) and he of course, loves apple sauce. I sometimes cringe at all the unnecessary stuff that goes into the store bought stuff, but buy it most of the time anyway… which is also unnecessary now when I know how easy it is to make your own at home, and how much better it tastes!
What I really planned for the past few weekends was to go to a local orchard (not too many of them here) and do some family apple picking. And then go home and bake all different kind of goodies, including apple sauce for my son. It didn’t happen for many reasons, but I did manage to at least get some nice apples from farmer’s market.
I really went totally blind into this thinking, how hard can it be to cut up some apples and add sugar and some spices?! And it really isn’t hard. I would recommend only to start a little shy on the amount of sugar and then add more, depending on your taste. I’ve had three different testers and three different opinions on the sweetness, my son obviously liked the sweetest version…
Homemade Apple Sauce
4 to 5 large tart apples, peeled and diced
1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar, start with a 1/4 and go from there
2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
zest of one lemon
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of ginger
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cup water
Combine all the ingredients in a pot and simmer until most of the water evaporates.
If the apples are still not the consistency you are going for, add some more water. I cooked them for about half and hour and then mushed them just a tiny bit because I wanted chunks in mine, but feel free to mush them to whatever consistency you prefer.
We ate this apple sauce (yes, it was for my son, but we all ate it because it was yummy) on it’s own and also with some vanilla Greek yogurt and granola. That was really a hit with my toddler and myself!
