The Craftiest Workshop

My bell choir friend offered me the opportunity to go over one afternoon and pick apples. It turns out she has two massive crab apple trees with the smaller red apples.

I had not seen her since COVID had shut everything down in mid March so it was nice to be able to chat while we picked apples. Her husband was on a ladder getting the higher branches and we picked pretty much all we could reach on the lower branches. They had so many apples filling pails, bins, and even bags. I took as many as I thought I could deal with. When I got home I had to come up with some ideas. The picture above was one of the two bins I took home.

Quartered Apples for Freezing

The following Friday, my eldest son’s day off, I asked him to help me with some of the apples. I got him cutting the apples in fours leaving the core but cutting off the blossoms and stems. He put the apples in a salt water bath which helped them not to brown.

I tsp salt for each 8 cups of water

After the top of the water was full of apples, he used a slotted spoon and spooned the apples onto parchment lined cookie sheets.

The cookie sheet was then put in the freezer. He did up three trays. The next day I poured the apples into large labelled ziplock bags for future recipes.

Apple Jelly

My plan was to make a batch of juice from the apples to make jelly. For each 4 generous cups of apples, I added one cup of water to my largest pot. After adding 12 cups of apples and 3 cups of water, I let the apples boil and simmer until they were tender.

I placed cheesecloth over a strainer in a large bowl to collect the juice. In the end, after letting it strain awhile, I ended up with 6 cups of juice. I put it into empty margarine containers and put it in the fridge overnight.

The next day, I poured 4 cups of juice into a pot on the stove and added 7 1/2 cups of sugar. I added a tsp of margarine so that it would reduce the amount of foam on the top of the jelly.

While that started to heat, I grabbed my kettle that I use for canning, filled it and plugged it in. I use the kettle to pour boiling water into my jars in the sink. This replaces the need for a water bath or pressure cooker. Once the water comes to a full boil, I turn the kettle off but do not pour the water out until just before the jelly is ready to go into jars. Sometimes I will reboil if it has sat awhile.

I put my smallest pot on the stove with some water to boil the lids. Once the water begins to boil, I put in the flat sealer lids and let them boil for 10 min. If I am not ready to use them by then, I leave them in the pot with the lid on and the heat turned off until I need them. Some people will boil the rings as well but I never have and rarely does it affect a lid not sealing.

When I started making jam years ago, I purchased a set of canning tools which I have used numerous times over. They include a magnetic wand for grabbing the lids from the pot, a wide funnel to fit in the jars when pouring, a red ladle with a curved handle end that hooks on the pot and a tongs that can grab jars. I set these items out where I need them; the wand near the stove, the funnel and ladle beside my pot holder on which I will put the hot pot of jelly and the tongs near the sink where the jars are.

I also lay out a small cutting board that I place the jar on while filling it and another larger cutting board to put the hot filled jars on. I grab a small piece of paper towel to wipe the edge of the jars before putting the lids on in case some jelly spatters on the edge.

Crab apples contain their own pectin. As long as you cook the apples with the cores and skins, the juice contains enough pectin to gel by itself without using Certo. I cooked the jelly for about 30 minutes, stirring, but I probably could have cooked it ten minutes less and had more of a loose jelly.

When the jelly seems hot enough and a small amount of jelly appears on your stirring spoon, it is time to jar it. I removed the pot from the stove and place it on a pot holder on the counter. I poured the boiling water from the kettle into the jars in the sink. I skimmed a small amount of foam off the top with a spoon. For each jar I did the following:

• Using the tongs grab a jar and dump out the boiling water
• Place the jar on the small cutting board
• Put the funnel in the jar
• Using the ladle, spoon jelly into the jar leaving 1/4 inch at the top
• Remove the funnel and wipe any jelly from the rim
• Using the magnetic wand, grab one lid from the pot
• Place the lid firmly on the rim and put a ring on until it is just tight
• Put the jar on the large cutting board

The “jelly” I ended up with was more jam than jelly. It made 7 small jars worth of jam.

Apple Sauce in the Slow Cooker

• 24 cups of apples cut in quarters blossoms and stems removed
• 3 cups of water
• slow cooker or large pot
• 3 cups of brown sugar ( or more to taste)

While my son was doing his cutting, I was preparing apples for the slow cooker. I did the same thing, cutting off just the blossoms and stems and cutting the apples in quarters. I was putting apples in my 8 cup measure then dumping them in with 1 cup of water. I got 24 cups of apples in my larger slow cooker. I planned on letting that sit all day while I continued working with apples at the stove. By the end of the afternoon, the apples in the slow cooker were ready. I scooped out some of the clear juice floating near the top and added it to the juice left over from the stove batch. This gave me three cups for freezing for future jelly. I mashed the remaining mixture with a potato masher then added 3 cups of brown sugar. I used my immersion blender to mix it up and it got quite smooth. We were having pork for supper so I left a small amount in a pot on the stove for that. The rest I put into small one serving sized plastic storage containers and one margarine container. I let them cool in the fridge before freezing them. *NOTE* the apple sauce did taste good but was a bit gritty. The cores did not break down enough and you had to spit out small pieces. Next time I will make it with apples that are cored OR buy a food mill which apparently breaks down everything to very small pieces.

Apple Pie Filling

6 cups of crab apples cut on all four sides; no stems, blossoms or cores

3/4 cup sugar

1.5 tsp cinnamon

2 Tbsp flour

1 Tbsp lemon juice

A week later and I decided to tackle the other bin of apples. After the first day of apple preparations, I decided that coring the apples would allow me greater versatility so that is what I did. I cut the apples on four sides leaving mostly just the core. If the apple was a bit larger I also cut around the blossom and stem to get as much of the fruit as possible. I used the salt water bath method above. I measured out 6 cups of apples and added the sugar, cinnamon, flour and lemon juice.

If I had had large margarine containers, it would have been a perfect size for freezing. Instead I used large ziplock bags and poured the mixture in. This amount will be enough for two regular pies.

I repeated this and got another batch of apple pie filling.

Apple Crisp Filling

• 8 cups of crab apples
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1.5 tsp cinnamon
• 2 Tbsp flour
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice

This is the same mixture as above except I added an extra 2 cups of apple. Apple crisp topping always has sugar so I thought it needed less already mixed into the apples. I bagged this as well, writing on the ziplock in permanent marker so I know which one to grab.

Apples for later

The last thing I did was cut apples without cores, stems and blossoms, put them on parchment lined cookie sheets and put them in the freezer. The next day I bagged and labelled them for future recipes.

This was six hours later and I was left with just one ice cream pail of crab apples for snacking on.

In total, processing all the apples probably took about 10 man hours but I feel I have lots to show for it.