What to do when you keep getting baskets of backyard apples sent home with you? The obvious answer would usually be apple sauce, but some child (who shall remain nameless) went through an absolute mania for the stuff last year. Unfortunately, the phase lasted just long enough for me to can a cupboard-full of it. Which is still there. (Have any good baking recipes that use up a lot of apple sauce? Asking for a friend…) Obviously this year’s apples were going to need to be preserved differently. Canning some apple pie filling was just the thing!
When I can apple pie filling I use this recipe here: https://www.babysavers.com/easy-apple-pie-filling/
I consider this a great beginner friendly recipe. It is fairly easy, uses mostly ingredients that are already on hand, and doesn’t have excessively long chopping or cooking phases. I is also safe for water bath canning which means that it doesn’t need a lot of equipment.
This recipe is meant to be ready to go, straight out of the jar. Pour it into your pie crust, pop it in the oven, and bam! You have a lovely slice of warm pie in the time it takes the crust to bake.
It uses Clear Jel for the filling, to keep the liquid from being runny. When I first started making this recipe, Clear Jel wasn’t something that I could find locally and would have been very expensive to buy online. I looked into it this time and it is absolutely something I will try next year, now that such a wide variety of things can be shipped to your door. I stuck with the original variation this time though, which is to add the cornstarch before you use it.
This lets me use the apples for a wider variety of things. I also chose this way because the apples were from Grandad’s tree, and I trade him fruit for a portion of the canned goods. He is partial to having his fruit canned quite simply, often in just a simple syrup, so that he can add it to other desserts. (This recipe does have cinnamon and spices, but the flavor is very nice and it got the official Grandad seal of approval.)
The one thing I would suggest you do differently than I did is to use a firmer apple. This was very much a case of making the most of the food I have access to. I had excess apples, I looked through my apple recipes and went from there. If you were to start from the other end of the equation, with the discovery of this lovely canning recipe, you would want to be sure that the apples you acquired would hold up well to cooking. This batch will probably be used in baking or over oatmeal though, so a softer texture didn’t matter.
So give into temptation next time you see all of the lovely fall apples on sale! You’ll know exactly what to do with them. In fact, you’ll be doing future You a favor! The holidays will sneak up before you know it, and just think how glad you’ll be to have a short cut waiting in the cupboard.
These also make pretty amazing Christmas gifts… (Too soon? Haha!)
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