Homemade Apple Sauce & Awards

An Apple everyday keeps the Doctor away.

Apple is such a fruit that no matter where you go in the world you'll definitely find apples, may be not your favourite variety but some tasty one to munch on. Today's post is about something very simple but yet delicious & very useful. It's homemade Apple Sauce and credit for this recipe goes to my DD, as a baby she never liked applesauce I use to buy for her (ready to eat baby food).

But in her preschool once a month she use to have cooking class, where once they made applesauce, that was the day...... she came home taught me the recipe and...... then onwards she loves it, only thing she make sures once in a while "Mom did you used my recipe?" and answer is "Yes"...... because I never knew before that how to make applesauce at home, sometime there are certain things that they are so simple & easily available that we forget about them, I guess we take them for granted. But that day onwards it's been almost 4 yrs. now I never used store bought applesauce, if I'm in hurry I use microwave but only homemade applesauce please.

I'm sending her delicious & healthy Homemade Apple Sauce suitable for any age (infants 6 months onwards) to Radhika's & Sudeshna's Food For Stages Of Life -Cooking For Infants & Toddlers event.

Ingredients :

• 4 Apples( preferably sweet kind, I used 3 red delicious & 1 granny smith)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
• pinch of salt
• 3-4 tblsp. apple juice or water

Method :

1)Peel & core the apples & pears then roughly chop them.

2)Put them in a large microwave safe bowl. Add rest of the ingredients. Microwave them till they get soft about 5 min. on high OR

3)Pressure cook them on med. high, after one whistle turn the gas off & let them stay in the steam.

4)Once cooled check them, they should be mushy when you press them between your fingers.

5)Now you can either puree them finely for babies or using hand blender blend them coarsely for toddlers.

Note : 1)Above mentioned quantity would yield you approximately 2 cups of applesauce, though it totally depends upon the size of apples you use.And you can store it in the fridge for up to 5 days or so. But I prefer to freeze it in small portions, if I'm using it for babies, to maintain the freshness or I make it in small quantities....it's so simple.

2)If apples are little tart I normally add one pear, to balance the tartness of apples but it's totally optional. You can also make various fruit sauces using different fruits available in that season like peaches, plums etc.

There are few other ways to use this sauce:

1)For babies it can be mix with any baby cereal like rice or oats.

2)Can be mixed with plain yogurt & you have flavoured yogurt ready with no extra sugars.

3)It can be used as dip for crackers & hard pretzels.

4)As fat & egg substitute in baking.

Go grab some apples,wash, core & chop them, steam them & enjoy your homemade applesauce.Big thanks to SE of Denufood for passing me my first awards, It's really nice of her, I'm feeling happy, good start to a new week. (Uh...oh...I don't know how to post those awards to my blog & further pass them to the blogs I like to read....got to do some research...may be little help here....someone...please).

Update : I posted this post in the morning but then I thought it would be nice to add some benefits of applesauce. Apple Sauce has a good reputation not only among babies but among every age group for various reasons, it's not only tasty snack but also :

1) It contains many phytonutrients that act as antioxidants.

2) It is a great source of fiber, offering almost 4 g per serving.

3) It is full of many helpful flavonoids as well. Some of these help reduce inflammation in the blood vessels and joints, which helps relieve pain from arthritis and also promotes healthy blood flow.

4) The antioxidants in applesauce helps to prevent many forms of cancer that can be caused by the free radicals they fight.

5) The flavonoids found in applesauce help to protect liver cells.

for more details you can click here.