Faking It Well: Spiced Crockpot Applesauce

Tis the season for apples!  Everyone already has their own favorite apple recipes.  There are the pies, the crisps, the dumplings, the sauces and MORE!  This recipe is worth trying though because it takes the best of the pie, crisp and dumpling FLAVOR and puts it into a sauce.  This applesauce could be served as a surprisingly sweet side dish or warm it up and pile it on top of vanilla ice cream.  It literally taste like an apple dumpling with out the crust!

Spiced Crockpot Applesauce

Ingredients:

• 8 apples – peeled, cored & thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup water
• 3/4 cup brown sugar (or less)
• 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Put the apples and water in slow cooker and cook on low for 6-8 hours.  Add the brown sugar & pumpkin pie spice and cook another 30 minutes.

TIPS:

• If you have never made your own apple sauce, this is a great one for you to try!  You don’t need any special equipment (besides a slow cooker) and it doesn’t make a massive amount of applesauce.
• This will make a chunkier sauce.  I was ok with that, but if you really prefer a smooth sauce maybe you could put it in the blender for a little bit.
• Use whatever apples you have on hand!  I was gifted a bunch of apples that were all different kinds and my sauce turned out great using them.  When you make a more traditional apple sauce that is just apples and a little sugar, the flavor of the apples can be very important.  However, this sauce has enough spice to it that I really don’t think it matters as much which apples you choose.
• Don’t add all the brown sugar at once.  I actually made a batch and a half of sauce, but I didn’t increase the sugar and pumpkin spice.  My applesauce was plenty sweet, so you might not feel like you need all of your sugar.
• Have some freezer containers on hand so you don’t have to eat it all at once.

THE HARDEST PART:  Peeling and cutting up all the apples!  No joke, this did take a while.  The goal of all my “Faking it Well” recipes is that they are impressive enough serve to guests, yet so incredibly simple.  This apple sauce actually takes a little bit more time than my typical “Faking it Well” recipes, but honestly you are just cutting up apples.  It isn’t that hard.

This recipe was adapted from AllRecipes.com.