Apple sauce

I’ve made apple sauce before on many occasions but only as an accompaniment to pork. In fact I think that’s the only way I’d ever eaten apple sauce. Trawling the internet for baby-friendly recipes I kept coming across apple sauce used as a sweetener then discovered its use as a sugar substitute. So I searched for some recipes just to be sure it didn’t have any ‘secret’ ingredients.

I was surprised to discover that the majority of recipes had sugar in them (maybe my searching skills aren’t as good as I think they are!). Hmmm, why put sugar in something you’re using as a sugar substitute? Ok, you’re still reducing the amount of sugar in the recipe and yes, some apples need some sweetening up, but why not just use sweet apples? Armed with some sweet Gala apples I was ready to experiment.

One of the things I dislike most in the kitchen is peeling fruit and vegetables. One of the reasons is that I’m super clumsy and easily distracted so no matter how much I try to concentrate I always manage to either peel some of my finger or slice through a nail. And besides wounding myself, peeling can take up a lot of time.

I decided not to peel the apples and see how the sauce turned out. Not only did it save me loads of time, but there’s lots of goodness in the peel. If, like me, you don’t have one of those wonderful gadgets that cores and chops your apples into wedges in one go, just chop the four sides off each apple, chopping the large pieces in half. I also added some slices of lemon to the pot to stop the apple from browning as it cooked.

Some recipes add ground cinnamon after pureeing. I wanted to keep my apple sauce plain as you can always add cinnamon at the point when you’re adding it to a recipe. Some people also add some butter as well as sugar to the finished sauce. I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

So how did my experiment of leaving the peel on work out? Well the peel does produce a slightly grainy texture to the sauce after pureeing it. If you’re using the sauce in other recipes you’d never know this though. Even if I was feeding the sauce to a baby (either on its own or mixed with other fruit or vegetables) I honestly wouldn’t worry about the texture.

APPLE SAUCE

Prep time: 5 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Makes about 1 1/2 cups or about 450ml of sauce
Freezable

6 sweet apples (eg. Gala, Red Delicious or Fuji)
1 cup water
2 slices of lemon

Chop the four sides off each apple and chop the large pieces in half. Put the chopped apple in a medium pot with the water and slices of lemon.

Bring to the boil then drop the heat to low and cover. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally so the apple cooks evenly.

Drain the apple and discard the lemon. Puree in the pot with a hand blender.

Now I’m off to make something with my apple sauce!