what about the plastic animals?: Making Applesauce

Applesauce1

Applesauce2

Applesauce3

Applesauce is one of those foods that's well worth making from scratch. I find the stuff from a jar is usually overly sweet with a weird aftertaste. The basic recipe is very forgiving:

Cut up a bunch of apples and put them in a sauce pan. Cook over medium-low heat until mushy. Run through a food mill. Total time: 30 minutes. Do this on a Sunday morning so your whole kitchen smells like apples.

In one of my food books I ran across a recipe that had five or six different steps and included lemon zest, lemon juice and salt, among other ingredients. Way too complicated.

I usually use a mix of apples that have sat in the fridge for too long with fresh apples. I cored the apples above simply out of habit. The food mill will catch the seeds so you can skip the coring. Use a mix of apple varieties or just one type. If you stick with one variety don't choose Red Delicious or Granny Smith. The former is just terrible. Nobody should ever buy a Red Delicious. Granny Smiths aren't much better and they are overly tart for applesauce.

Add stick or shake of cinnamon if you want. Add sugar or honey if the sauce is turning out too tart for your taste. Add water or cider if the sauce is too thick. Keep in mind that the sauce takes on the color of the apple peels used. I only say that because the sauce above used a lot of green apples and took on a not necessarily appetizing green tinge.

The sauce is good eaten by itself or used in a cake, such as this guilt-free applesauce cake from Rachelle. If you want to make feeling guilty applesauce cake substitute whole milk sour cream or yogurt for the lowfat stuff and use two tablespoons of melted butter instead of vegetable oil. To be really special use olive oil instead of vegetable oil. Then throw in a half cup each of raisins and walnuts to up the sugar and fat content even more. A pinch of ground cloves is also good.

When the cake is done serve it in your beautiful living room.