Saturday, August 31, 2013

the possibilities of apple preservation

Perhaps you remember a few years back when I posted about  my accumulation of a rather large apple supply. Certainly this year has been no different in that respect. I find myself with boxes of apples and on a hunt for ways to be creative preserving them. This book


has become one of my favorite cookbooks on the subject. The making of apple pectin with the cores, skins, and scraps has entertained me for hours and in the process has taught me the joy of making all sorts of jellies using apple pectin as the base.

Last year we spent a full day with my friend, Laura, and her girls in the making of apple pies to freeze with our abundance of apples. These apple pies froze beautifully and provided bubbly hot apple pies during the winter season to serve our guests. This summer I have make one pie and one tart to freeze so far, but the thought of making all those crusts this year gave me an idea. How about making apple pie filling and canning it to make the pies fresh during the winter months? This is the recipe I used. The only alteration to this recipe was the elimination of the yellow food coloring, instead, I tossed in a few apples peels with the syrup to give it a natural color.

As of today only a few lone apples sit on my kitchen counter. I am not complaining.

4 comments:

Karen @ Pieces of Contentment said...

Great idea to preserve the pie filling, then you can make fresh crusts any size you like later on.

Thanks for you comment re Phyllis the butterfly.... We have many several parsley plants but none attract caterpillars here. What caterpillars does your parsley attract?

Leslie said...

Oh, that is a great idea! Yum.

GretchenJoanna said...

Way to go, Cathy! It gives such a happy feeling to clear the counters by putting the harvest by.

Cathy said...

Karen,

The caterpillars that love parsley are tiger swallowtails. You can see the butterfly on my header. We have so many tiger swallowtails flittering around this summer!

dumplings and cookies

" We'll all have chicken 'n dumplings when  she comes...." ( 4th stanza , She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountains,  ...