Apple Jelly and Apple Sauce

What a pleasure to cook at home these gluttony of fruit jellies, especially when fruits are good! I have no a apple tree and even a vegetable garden, but I can avail myself of something similar: a consortium of organic producers who delivered to my home a box of mixed products strictly seasonal. The organization is Bioexpress an association of producers from South Tyrol and partner with a group of producers from Apennines of Parma in Italy.

Many of the apples delivered are of kind we have never seen in normal retail chains, even in the organic market and are so good to be able to reconciled me (I generally do not particularly like apples) with this fruit, recommended by the antiquity for its many healthful qualities.

I'm thinking that, after the famous story of Adam, Eve and the serpent, apples are trying to dab what happened in that ancient time...

Today, so here are some recipes that we can do at home with a few apples

La Apple Jelly and Dough

Ingredients: Apples and lump sugar, vanilla bean or anise seeds.

With apples we'll prepare a juice to make jelly and we will use what remains to make a paste more solid than quince paste or a smooth apple sauce.

Peel apples, take out seeds, slice thinly and place them in a pot completely covered of fresh water. Let them cook until tender. About halfway through cooking, add a vanilla bean or one teaspoon anise seeds, wrapped in gauze.

When apples are cooked, filter the liquid in the pan separating it from the pulp.

For the Jelly:

Use only the juice and add the same weight (or slightly less ) of sugar lumps, broken . Leave to rest for about an hour, stirring occasionally so that the sugar dissolves slowly. Put the pan on the fire then, continue to cook quite slow until the syrup become thicker and takes a gelatinous consistency. Then place the jelly into jars, cover and close them well.

For the Apple Dough:

After preparing the jars of jelly, add to the solid residue of apples a same weight of sugar. Cook about ½ hour, stirring constantly because it tends to stick. When well reduced, make with it a layer with of about 2 cm on a baking dish or on a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Let dry at a temperature of about 30°C in a convection oven let open. Cook for ½ hour and then shut off and repeat this operation once or twice in the days that follow. (The ideal would be to have a wood stove where to dry it the old-fashioned way.) When do you think it is ready, cut this dough into square or diamond-shaped and trimmed with white or brown sugar. These sweeties will keep well in a tin box.

For the Apple Sauce

If you want you cab prepare an easy and quick Apple Sauce.

Take the solid residue of the apples and add half its weight of sugar. Bake for just 15 minutes, stirring always and then put it into jars. Apple Sauce is a very popular and expecially good for kids of all ages .

With a little sugar added and immediately eaten, it can replace with success any homogenized fruit that is on sale. Doing so you will also contribute a taste education of youngest children givin to the a delightful snack without nothing chemical inside.

If we want to keep it longer, remember to add some filtered juice of lemon, during cooking.