Making apple sauce and juice

It has been fun to preserve apples in the past few weeks. I have found that making apple sauce is surprisingly simple. You just have to cook the apples with a little water, then puree them. You can add sugar or spices to taste if desired. Then you process the jars for 10 - 15 minutes in a hot water bath. Apple sauce provides a much nicer finished product than preserving apple slices or stewed apples in water. I have found that jars of stewed apples get lots of air bubbles in them when processed, and if you pack the apples raw there is lots of wasted space in the jar as they shrink when cooked. With apple sauce you fit lots of apples in one jar and it looks lovely. It is yummy too, just to eat with yoghurt or on its own!

When I was making the sauce for the first time, Dave suggested that we also make juice. You do this by straining the apples before pureeing them. We used a piece of cloth and squeezed the juice through it. The juice is tasty, although you have to remember to stir it up before serving or it tastes watery. It can taste syrupy if you stir it. The first time we tried processing the juice in the water bath for 10 minutes. We will taste it before doing this again, as this method can negatively affect the taste. I froze the second batch of juice. The second time I took too much juice from the apple pulp. It is important to ensure that the apples still have a pouring consistency for your sauce. My second batch was more like paste than sauce.

Have you ever made apple sauce? Do you have any tips or ways of doing it that you particularly like?