Recipes for dessert apples, please!

[caroline7758]

The tree at my allotment has been covered this year, but most of the fruit has fallen before I've been able to pick it, so I'm looking for recipes for dessert apples as they won't store. I don't know the variety but they are lovely and sweet.

[caroline7758]

[ACE]

We have the same problem with fallers and I don't like waste. The grandchildren love apple smoothies and it does freeze as well.  You do need a good blender though to get them pulped right down to liquid.

[caroline7758]

Good idea, Ace- thanks, I'll see if my blender's up to it!

[artichoke]

My large productive tree is a dual purpose Charles Ross, and I always make and freeze masses of apple pulp  for future pies, crumbles, apple sauce for pork, apple cake and so on. Rather obvious, I know. Luckily I have a wonderful peeler/slicer/corer, so it takes seconds to process each apple and drop it into a pan with a little boiling water and some lemon juice to stop it going brown. Some gets frozen as lightly scalded pieces, some as pulp.

Another thing I do is put a tray of apple rings into a fan oven at the lowest possible setting and leave it there for 12 hours or so or until they are dried and chewy. They keep well in a big jar and I love them. Lemon juice is used to stop them going brown before drying, but if they do go brown it makes little difference to the taste, just the appearance.

[artichoke]

Forgot to add that I am following a recipe for making apple vinegar, so simple I am not convinced it will work. The trimmings from the apple processing are allowed to brown on purpose, placed in a large container topped up with water, covered with a cloth and left for a couple of months or until it tastes like vinegar.....then strained. Hope it does work.

Same trimmings, or whole apples, can be made into mint jelly for going with lamb.

In my youth, with my first husband, we made gallons and gallons of the most delicious and strong cider - we had friends with orchards and presses and wooden barrels.....I couldn't do it now. We would keep a barrel in the living room with a syphon, and fill a jug whenever we felt like it. Outside in the garden were several empty barrels which the children and their friends used for barrel running, crashing into each other to make one of them fall off. Happy days!

[Jeannine]

Caroline, we don't get the bakers such as Bramleys here like you do unless we find a specialist local grower for a small window each year so all the fruit we use for anything is dessert type fruit, so use your usual recipes, maybe just allow for the texture of the apple re cooking times. I make a heap of apple pies ready to bake and freeze them, make and bottle apple sauce, use them in mixed jams and I also freeze prepared slices.

XX Jeannine

[caroline7758]

Artichoke, what temp do you do the apple rings at? I've just taken some out after nearly 12 hours at 30 and they haven't dried out at all!

[artichoke]

I use one tiny click above the "thaw" symbol on mine. If they aren't ready after 12 hours, I should simply turn it up a bit.

I saw apple rings cooked in Tasmania, where the man demonstrating the apple peeling machine threw some rings onto the top of a wood burning stove, and we ate them maybe 10 or 15 minutes later and they were lovely. I'd forgotten that until just now. But I promise that the fan oven does act as a dehydrator, and once you have found the best temperature for your oven, the rings are excellent. It beats threading rings on a string and hanging them in the airing cupboard - very fiddly and unsuccessful!

I have done it with tomatoes too, slightly hotter, as I was calling them "sundried" and imagining an Italian summer sun. They were delicious, even when I started with the most dreary supermarket ones reduced to get rid of them.