Apple sauce – apples, sugar and butter, what’s not to like?!

Apple sauce is a staple in the Batchelor household, it is the thing that goes with roasts regardless of whether they have pork as part of them and also makes for a lovely topping on yoghurt. Up until about a couple of years ago, we always used shop bought, until we realised just how easy it is to make!

Luckily, we have no shortage of apples, as Nanny & Grandad have an apple tree in their garden, which is always laden with apples ripe for the picking, or shaking by the smallest Batchelor, Angus loves making it rain apples, who doesn’t?

So, the recipe is incredibly simple it only uses 4 ingredients: apples, lemon zest, sugar and butter – how much you use of each ingredient depends entirely upon how many apples you have (we normally gather around 2kg). Use the following ingredient weights as a guide and when you get the hang of it, you can tweak to your taste – sweet vs buttery vs lemony.

INGREDIENTS

 

• 225g cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped
• ½ lemon, zest only
• 2 tbsp water
• 15g butter
• 1 tsp caster sugar

METHOD

As I mentioned, this is probably the easiest recipe you’re ever going to follow, but don’t underestimate the tastiness of the end result.

So, it starts with the humble apple…

 

Peel, core and cut the apples into quarters and pop into a big heavy pan. If you have lots of apples, you’ll likely need a couple of pans.

Then add the lemon zest…

And cook the apples down until the texture is loose, but still has a couple of bits of apple in it, this way it allows for a bit of texture if you end up using the ingredients in a pie.

At this stage, you want to take the pan off the heat and add the butter…

…and then the sugar (I use a mix of brown and white caster sugar)…

Once the mixture has absorbed the melted butter and dissolved the sugar, you’re set to pop into sterilised jars – we use the Kilner brand as they’re great quality and can take high heats. There is nothing worse when you’ve spent the time to cook something, you go and crack one of the jars because they are thin and breakable.

For bonus points you want to stack a few of the jars for full creative effect!  Ta da…

As always, I would love to hear how you get on and if there’s anything I can learn from.