Make Something Monday ... Homemade Applesauce

Since working from home I'm trying my best to do cost cutting things. Now I gave up daycare cost but I now have lunch cost at home for Caden. To keep this budget in control I've been doing good and healthy lunches but then I noticed the cost of the applesauce. That boy can go threw a jar in a week. Time to try making some! Who knew it could be that easy ... ok my mom who has told me time and time again it's easy but well you know who listens to their parents. Certainly not my kids ... LOL. So here it goes!

Applesauce Recipe

Preparation time: 45 minutes. The sugar amounts are just guidelines, depending your taste, and on the sweetness of your apples, use less or more. If you use less sugar, you'll likely want to use less lemon juice. The lemon juice brightens the flavor of the apples and balances the sweetness.

Ingredients

• 3 to 4 lbs of peeled, cored, and quartered apples. (Make sure you use a good cooking apple like Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Fuji, Jonathan, Mcintosh, or Gravenstein.)
• 4 strips of lemon peel - use a vegetable peeler to strip 4 lengths
• Juice of one lemon, about 3-4 Tbsp
• 3 inches of cinnamon stick
• 1/4 cup of dark brown sugar
• up to 1/4 cup of white sugar
• 1 cup of water
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Method

1 Put all ingredients into a large pot. Cover. Bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes.

2 Remove from heat. Remove cinnamon sticks and lemon peels. Mash with potato masher.

Ready to serve, either hot or refrigerated. Delicious with vanilla ice cream or vanilla yogurt.

Freezes easily, lasts up to one year in a cold freezer.

One of my favorite sites gave me this: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/applesauce/

Now this one I loved it had a great lemon flavor, I don't think it was Caden's favorite, I think I'll try a less fancy one for him. P.S. I have no clue why there is butter in the picture, just go with it! Plus I used the jar that I bought at Wal-Mart to reuse for this project. Plus I won this bag of Ideal from my girl at Firefly awhile back and I've been trying to cut back on sugar so it's the best to cook with!