Last week, I had a taste of fall’s cool weather and found myself in the kitchen the entire weekend trying out a few new recipes! In Friday’s Fab Five, a list of my fall favorites, I decided that I was going to take on apple cider from scratch and the very next day I had simmering apples on the stove top and the entire house smelled like the holidays! I finally found an apple cider recipe that doesn’t start with a base ingredient of apple cider lol.

Yields: 1/2 Gallon (8 cups)

Ingredients:

8 -10 gala apples
1/2-1 cup sugar
4 cinnamon sticks
4 tablespoons allspice

Directions:

Cut your apples into wedges {I used an apple corer and divider to blaze through the chopping process}. I did toss the cores; however, there is no need to remove the peel or any seeds that may have been left behind from coring the apples. In a large stock pot add your apples, fill with just enough water to cover the apples, and then add the sugar {I used only 1/2 a cup and it was plenty sweet}.

Wrap your cinnamon and allspice in a doubled up cheese cloth, tie {I tied it with a twisted strip of cheesecloth}, and add this to the apples and water. Boil on high for one hour uncovered checking on it frequently. Turn down heat and let simmer for two hours covered. Take off the heat and let cool. Remove the spices and mash up the apples to a pulp like consistency. A potato masher works well for this.

Once cool, pour into a strainer over a large bowl. When most of the juice has drained away, put the remainder of the pulp into a doubled up cheese cloth and squeeze over the bowl until no more juice comes out. It’s easier to strain the pulp in small batches, using new cheesecloth for each batch, so you can squeeze out as much juice as possible. At this point you can either re-strain the juice to get out the little bits of pulp that remain with a cheese cloth draped inside the strainer, or just leave it for extra flavor.

Store cider in an air tight container in your refrigerator for a week, or freeze it for later use. Reheat in the microwave or on the stove. If you end up with less than half a gallon and the flavor is a little strong, feel free to add water to taste. Add 1 cup at a time, simmering for 20 minutes and tasting between each cup until you reach desired flavor.

homemade apple cider recipe – altered from food.com

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