Take a large sack of apples and ......

A friend of mine inspired me to embrace the apple season with reminding me of the wonderful orchard at Te Hana in Northland was full of beautiful apples at amazing prices.  She had already spent the week juicing up and freezing numerous bottles of delectable and highly nutritious apple and carrot juice for her family and others which motivated me to capture the Autumns plenty as well.

Apples are very cheap at the moment with our local orchard selling a very large sack of apple probably about 15 - 20 kg worth for $13 what a bargain!.  So apple processing was up and running in the weekend.

 The four ways I used my sack of apples

• Apple juice using the juicier
• Dried apple in the dehydrator
• Stewed Apple
• Frozen raw apple for use in the Yoanna ice cream maker for Apple Maple Walnut Ice Cream 

The Apple Juice that I juiced, I placed into glass bottles and have frozen for future use, in particular in our morning smoothies. Be careful about freezing glass though as it can shatter easily and always leave plenty of space for expansion in the bottle when the liquid freezes.

The trick to dehydrating apples if wishing to get a crisp apple chip is to place the dehydrator on 55 degrees Celsius and dehydrator for around 12 - 15 hours. I dip my apples in a lemon water mix before placing on the dehydrator as this make sure of no browning.   I have a Ezi Dry Ultra FD1000 .

Stewed apple I simple place into a pot with a little water, adding a little organic rapadura sugar, cinnamon, clove and nutmeg.  Simmer until soft.  Once cooled I divide up into containers saved from various goods such as 'Lisa's hummus' and then freeze the stewed apple to place into crumbles, cakes, muffins or to simply have on its own with fresh raw cream.

To freeze apples for the Yoanna ice cream maker just thinly slice and place into a container or freezer bags and freeze for later use.  They free flow nicely.

Soooo get your bag of apples and start creating with the seasons .........enjoy :)