Apple purée in jars: no sugar, with cinnamon, for the whole winter
The simplest apple preserve and one of the first children get: apples cooked in a little water with cinnamon, blended smooth, into small jars, pasteurised. No sugar if the apples are sweet, a spoon if they are tart. In winter for crepes, porridge, on bread, as a baby dessert and for a shortcut apple pie.
Your own work in that: 30 min.
- Peeling 20 min
- Apples cooking 25 min
- Blending 10 min
- Pasteurising 20 min
- Cooling 15 min
Step by step
0 / 6 donePeel and cut the apples
Peel the apples, quarter, remove the cores and drop into a large pot. Splash with the lemon juice. A mix of varieties gives the best flavour: sweet ones give body, tart ones brightness.
Ingredients: 2000 g apples · 150 ml water · ½ pcs lemon, juice · 1 pcs cinnamon stick · 2 tbsp sugar
TipBruised and spotted apples are fine for purée: cut out the bad, the rest goes in the pot. Just do not use rotting or mouldy apples — mould reaches deeper than you can see. This is the preserve for apples nobody wants to eat out of hand.
Quarters without cores, lemonCook covered
Add the water and the cinnamon, cover and simmer 20–25 minutes, stirring every few minutes, until the apples collapse completely. There is little water because apples release their own juice; watch that they don't catch.
Little water, cinnamon, until collapsedBlend
Remove the cinnamon stick. Blend with a stick blender until smooth (or leave lumps if you like). Taste: tart? Add the sugar and boil a minute more. The purée should be thick; if thin, reduce uncovered 5 minutes.
Smooth or lumpy, thickInto jars
Spoon the hot purée into scalded small jars (200–300 ml, one portion each), to 1.5 cm from the rim, wipe the rims, screw the lids on.
Small jars, one portion eachPasteurise
Stand the jars in a pot on a cloth, add hot water to three-quarters of their height and pasteurise 20 minutes from the boil. Lift out, invert for 10 minutes, leave to cool. Pasteurising is essential here: the purée lacks the large amount of sugar that preserves jams.
TipSealed jars keep a year in the pantry. Opened purée keeps 5 days in the fridge; for a baby open a small jar and use it within 2 days.
Twenty minutes, because no sugarIn winter
For crepes, porridge, yogurt, on buttered bread. Warmed with butter and cinnamon it becomes stewed apples for racuchy. Instead of fresh apples in an apple pie: a jar of purée on a blind-baked shortcrust base, topped with crumble, 30 minutes at 180 °C.
Crepes, porridge, a shortcut apple pie
Before you start
With pear
Half pears, half apples: a sweeter, more velvety purée that needs no sugar at all.
With vanilla
The seeds of half a vanilla pod instead of cinnamon: a purée like a dessert, for ice cream and pudding.
The purée went brown
Too little lemon, or the peeled apples sat too long. Lemon straight after peeling and cooking without delay; colour doesn't affect the taste.