So many apples

My nice red rosy apple has a secret midst unseen;

You'd see if you could slip inside,

Five rooms so neat and clean.

In each room there are hiding

two seeds so shining bright;

Asleep they are and dreaming

of a lovely warm sunlight, 

And sometimes they are dreaming

of many things to be,

How someday they'll be hanging

Upon a Christmas tree.

This surely has been a wonderful year for our apple crop. Our trees are heavy with fruit just waiting to be picked. We've spent many an hour picking and eating, picking and baking, picking and saucing. There seems to be no end in sight for our apple trees this year, and for us, that is just fine!

Even our sweet little Red Chicken comes for jaunts with us on our picking excursions. She loves to pick up the little pieces the girls throw on the ground for her, not to mention all the bugs and other yummy stuff she finds in the tall grasses. 

We took our haul of over 50 lbs. of apples over to my folks house to process them all into applesauce. This is something we all very much look forward to sharing together. There is a deep-running connection within the collective effort of multiple generations working together, getting our hands dirty, and turning many apples into gallons of golden, sweet, delicious applesauce. 

We had some really wonderful helpers. Both Charlotte and Seraphina had their hands busy washing almost the whole lot of apples while I worked next to them chopping the apples and getting them into the pot for their first cooking.

This is just the first of 5 pots of apples the were cooked down awaiting their turn in the food mill.

My Dad, I love him dearly. He's always so eager and willing to work with me on whatever crazy scheme I concoct for myself. I can always turn to him for assistance, advice, or just venting. He's a man of few words but a man of dedicated service and devotion. 

Here we have over 5 gallons of applesauce! My Dad and I plus Charlotte and Seraphina all worked diligently on processing these big batch of apples within 5 hours time. It made for a long afternoon but an afternoon well spent.

With all the apples we still have on our trees we're able to continue baking through the Autumn season. Pies, cakes, more sauce.....you name it. This past weekend we made the Apple Cake from the story Apple Cake by Nienke van Hichtum.  I adjusted simply by changing the flour from regular all purpose to gluten free and added some oats to the cinnamon sugar topping. I was concerned at first whether or not the cake would come out edible and not just a hard lump of dough. We were all pleasantly surprised at how delicious it was, however a bit dense, adding a bit of cream or better yet, a caramel ice cream, would have made the cake simply divine.

This might just be one of my new favorite cakes. 

If you don't have the book you can find the recipe here.

I hope you are all finding many uses for the apples in your life :)