Baked Applesauce (The Simple Mom's Recipe)

You’ll need:
4-5 lbs of apples (just use whatever kind you’ve got!)
2 TB real lemon juice
1 TB pumpkin pie spice or 2 tsp cinnamon
¼ cup filtered water

1. Quarter and core your apples. If you want them peeled, you can do that before you cut them.
2. Put the water and apples in a roasting pan with a lid, or dutch oven.
3. Toss the apples with the lemon juice and pumpkin pie spice.
4. Bake at 350 degrees with the lid ON for 1 ½ hours.
5. Let them cool a bit before pureeing in food processor or blender to the consistency you want.

Kitchen Tips:

1. This makes the house smell SO good. Which is why I don’t do a bunch of batches all together – I’ll do up a batch when I know I’ll be home for the afternoon or evening, and make the house smell like heaven If you need to batch up more, you could fit 2 roasting pans full in the oven.
2. I store our applesauce in pint containers and these little Ball freezer containers. The small ones hold about a cup – which is a perfect split snack for the girls I’ve been sending a half of one of those small containers with my 3 year old for her morning snack at preschool. This batch made 2 pints full and 4 of the smaller containers.
3. We like our applesauce a little “chunky” but you can puree it further and it will be nice and smooth.
4. This took me about 10 minutes to get into the pan, then hands off for a little over an hour, and about 15 minutes to puree – not long at all. And that is doing it in batches in my smaller processor – if you have a real blender or processor, you can do it in one batch most likely super fast!
5. You can leave out the pumpkin pie spice (or cinnamon) if you like your applesauce plain – it is still really good! I used to batch up baby food apples this way!
6. I don’t think the applesauce needs extra “sweet” but if you think it needs more, by all means add some honey or maple syrup

This Recipe is compliments of Renee from Simple Moms. To see this great recipe and many other great real food recipies check out Simple Moms here http://www.thesimplemoms.com/2012/10/a-simple-real-food-recipe-baked-applesauce.html

Renee

the real food hippie :: renee is married to her superman and mama to her 2 busy bees. she loves soaking up the sun, real butter, and julia child. she believes any meal becomes great with butter, onions, garlic, and a glass of wine. her passion is helping people take baby steps to raise a real food generation in this world of highly processed food – one with healed guts, functioning minds, and solid health. Find more of Renee on pinterest and Google+.