Crock Pot Applesauce

We bought a big package of organic Gala apples at Costco before Thanksgiving so I could make the Pear-Ginger Applesauce in the crock pot, mentioned in my last post. Man it was delicious! After all was said and done, I was still left with about 7-8 apples (!) plus a couple in our fruit bowl, so I thought, hey I'll make some straight-up applesauce in the same method and everyone wins!

Plus, isn't hot homemade applesauce pretty festive and all?

But as it became time for the idea to become reality, the thought of peeling, slicing, and coring all those apples sounded downright awful.

When I went to the original (non pear-ginger variation) post about the crock pot applesauce, the blogger had photos of this little contraption that peeled/cored/sliced the apples FOR YOU. I guess I've been living under a rock as I'd never seen one of these things before. Not only was I in shock at the awesomeness of this, but the amazing novelty of it (in a weird way), restored some faith in humanity's ingenuity or something. I mean, peeling/coring/slicing the apples is the very thing that makes homemade apple pie hard, right? To amazon I went, looking up apple whatever-they're-calleds, texting some buddies asking if they'd heard of this amazing contraption (of course, everyone else had). But this was just research.

Yesterday when I was walking into my house from the car, my across-the-street neighbor who is a wonderful cook happened to be outside. I waved to him, crossed the street and said, "This is probably a long-shot, but you'd be the person to ask--do you have one of those apple peeler/corer/slicers?"  To my great delight, he nodded and gestured inside, where he and his wife got theirs out for me to borrow and showed me how it worked--he said, "all that I ask is that you bring the scraps for our chickens" (yes, our neighbors have chickens and give us eggs and they're beyond awesome). Now really, everybody wins!

Behold (the following photos will not win any awards, but they will suffice):

Look at these perfectly chopped, peeled, sliced apples! Mixed with a little sugar, cinnamon, sprinkle of ginger, and ready for the crock pot!

After simmering on low all night, we had some hot and delicious applesauce this morning!

And here's a cute baby in her bath from over the weekend. Every last one of these expressions make me melt.

Crock Pot Applesauce
ever-so-slightly adapted from here

10 apples (I used all Gala because it's what I had, but a mixture would probably be good), peeled, cored, sliced  (I drizzled a little lemon juice on the slices while I was cutting/peeling/coring them to keep them from browning too much)
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
A few shakes of ground ginger
1/4 cup apple juice

Stir cut-up, etc. apples in a large bowl with sugar, cinnamon, and a couple shakes of ground ginger. Pour apple juice in the bottom of a crock pot, then pour in apples. Cook on low for 8 hours. Enjoy hot or refrigerated!

I highly recommend the Pear-Ginger version, link above, too! Both are hits with my little one :)


(Who knew I could write so much about an apple corer/peeler/slicer???)