Slow Cooker Cranberry Applesauce

If you've never fixed homemade applesauce in a slow cooker, get out your "To-Do" list and jot it down right now. The toughest thing about homemade applesauce is peeling and coring the apples, and heck, that ain't so hard. And the payoff of that warm, sweet, chunky applesauce more than makes up for a few minutes peeling some apples.

I'll give you my basic applesauce recipe below, but what I really want to show you is a twist on homemade applesauce that I made a few weeks ago: Slow Cooker Cranberry Applesauce.

One of my happiest days of the year is the day that cranberries show up at the grocery store, and we usually have a bowl of fresh cranberry sauce in our fridge from November through February (cranberries freeze beautifully, so I stock up). I eat it as a side to the Thanksgiving turkey, of course, but also on top of yogurt or with some granola sprinkled on top. (Find my recipe for cranberry sauce here.)

About a month ago when the grocery store was overflowing with fall apples, I decided to make applesauce. It was tremendous, but I had a nagging thought that it was missing something. Something like cranberries!

A quick Internet search turned up several cranberry applesauce variations, but I chose to stick close to my original recipe with cranberries added in.

Here's the recipe to use for basic applesauce, and if you want to add some cranberries, then just throw some in!

Ingredients: 

8 medium apples (Use a combination of Golden Delicious, Honey Crisp, Fuji, Gala, etc.)

1 tsp fresh lemon juice 

1 tsp lemon zest (optional)

3 inch cinnamon stick or about 2 tsp. ground cinnamon

5 tsp light brown sugar (unpacked) - or agave

(Optional) 1 cup of fresh cranberries

1.  Peel, core and chop the apples.

2.  Add the sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and cinnamon stick, and cranberries, if using.

3.  Set crock pot to low and cook for 6 hours. Stir apples occasionally, apples will slowly become a delicious applesauce. 

Remove cinnamon stick and use an immersion blender or potato masher to blend until smooth or if you prefer a chunky sauce, leave sauce intact. 

So good! Try it this weekend as your after-dinner, cozy-up-with-a-movie snack.

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Workout of the Day
Still nursing the sore lower back, so na-da. Things better shape up soon, because I've got to be in tip-top shape to tackle Asylum 2 as soon as Zach is done with his marathon in a few weeks!