I'm taking you back about a month ago, to a Thursday afternoon and making applesauce in my sister-in-law's kitchen. I won't bore you with the whole saga of getting the "wrong" apples (Granny Smith) and then getting the "right" ones (Ginger Gold). Though we had anticipated making our batch of applesauce from just the Ginger Golds, we decided to experiment with what we had on hand. And I'm rather glad we did!
We ended up using all the apples, carefully controlling the ratio of Granny's to Gold's we put in for consistency; it amounted to three parts Ginger Gold to every one part Granny Smith. I thought the Granny's would be terrible for making applesauce because of their tart nature, but they added a much-needed apple-y depth of flavor to the milder/sweeter Golds. We did add some sugar to taste (a scant 1/2-cup for about eight quarts), and I became the proud owner of 19 (now 16) quarts of green-gold applesauce. Many thanks to my mom for the canning jars!
apples in waiting
cookin'
final product
Goodness! How many did you make? Look at all of those apples. I had a canning and preserving event last month (you can see the HHM event in discussions Oct 17th) and it turned out really well. It was my first attempt and I am going to do it again next week with my niece.
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