apple baking

What do you do after going apple picking? Why apple baking, of course! I spent Saturday baking all sorts of yummy apple goodies, and most of the family got in on the action too! I had made up some mixes a couple of weeks ago to make this go much faster once I actually got around to doing it. I was tired at the end of the day, but it really was not too bad. Just about all of it went into the freezer at the end of the day, though I did keep out a few goodies so we could taste the rewards of our hard work!

I made-

4 -8x8 pans of apple cake (since I used whole wheat flour and reduced the sugar we will be using these for breakfasts!)

6- pans of varying sizes of apple rolls (these are like cinnamon rolls, only with apples and apple

butter in the filling as well). Some of these are for a friend, and some are for when it is my turn to take breakfast for our Sunday school class. We are having some for breakfast this morning, so I will not really end up with many of these in my freezer for later.

8- apple pies! This was what got Rob excited about apple picking and apple baking! The promise of pies! The big kids helped with this project buy using the apple corer/peeler/slicer things we have and unwrapping the caramels (oh yea, most of the pies were carmel apple pies!). We will not be eating all of these pies ourselves. Three went into the freezer right away (for the holidays), one went to a neighbor, and two will go to church tonight for the "pie social". That leaves us with two pies to enjoy right now. We only go through about half a pie at a sitting so we will get to enjoy these for a few days!

I also made up another batch of apple butter since it has been such a hit around here, but it turned out a bit sour, I'm trying to decide what to do with it. It is all canned up, but I have some in the refrigerator that I will try again in a day or two to see if the flavor has mellowed. I used different apples this time and the lemon I used smelled quite "lemony", I should have added more sugar, but I knew I would be adding caramels to it later so I did not want to over load it. Oh well, every one has their flops from time to time. I think this was one of mine!