Just look at that pan of ooey, gooey appley deliciousness! Can’t you just smell the warm spices, and doesn’t it start to make you dream of crisp fall days and Thanksgiving dinners?
Making your own apple pie filling is super easy and SO much better (and more affordable!) than what you’d buy at the store.
When it’s apple season, it’s the perfect time to stock up to make your own applesauce, cider, and pie filling.
We live next door to Holmes County in Ohio, where a large Amish community resides. There is an orchard there that we like to visit in the fall where they sell a variety of apples by the bushel, peck, and 1/2 peck. We bought a bushel of Honeycrisp apples this year, the seconds, meaning they weren’t the best quality of apples, but they were cheaper, and as you can see from the picture, they worked just fine for eating, applesauce, freeze drying, and homemade pie filling.
You can use one variety of apple for pie filling, but it’s nice to combine a couple of varieties, balancing tart with sweet. We used honeycrisp for the sweet and added a few cortland apples for tartness.
It’s a bonus if you have a happy helper husband to peel the apples for you!
Freezer Apple Pie Filling
Course: Keepers at Home, Titus 2Difficulty: Easy32
servings15
minutesIngredients
16 cups apples, peeled and sliced thin
4 T. lemon juice
2 cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. salt
4 cups apple cider
4 cups water
Directions
- Toss apples slices with lemon juice in a large bowl.
- In a large dutch oven or stock pot, combine all of the dry ingredients until blended.
- Pour in the cider and water and mix well.
- Bring to a boil, then stir constantly for about two minutes.
- Pour in the apples and mix well.
- Cover and simmer for about 8- 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, uncover, and cool completely.
- Fill four gallon freezer bags with filling. Label and transfer to freezer. This makes enough to fill four pies. If you want or need less, just halve the recipe, or if you just want to make enough filling for one pie, quarter the recipe.
Bake someone happy!
