Slow Cooker Applesauce!

Guess who's back? Back again? Brittany's back, tell a friend. Okay, sorry I'm no Eminem- but the point is I'm back to blogging! The past couple of weeks have been totally cray cray for me because I was moving my little caravan from Florida to Arkansas to wait for my hubby to come home from his 6 1/2 month deployment to the Middle East. Pretty much all of last week I was just running errands and setting things up for him to have some-what of a stable "home" to come back to. I say "home" in quotations, because we are currently residing in our very generous friends house while we are in limbo until we move to our new base next month. I told you- cray cray! But it's all good now, because my husband arrived back in my arms last Saturday morning! Wahoo! So all is right in my world, I have been cooking up a storm- but most of the meals I've made him thus far are already on the blog! Back to me thinking up new ideas, at least I have a very good recipe tester now! :) Okay, I lured you here with promises of applesauce...

Have you ever made homemade applesauce before? If you answered no, that is a real shame! It is CRAZY easy and the end result is a much healthier applesauce than what you get in those little jars at the grocery store! Bonus, it is apple season and you can get all kinds of apples for super cheap right now. Depending on what kind of apples you get, it will change the taste of your sauce. Like if you were to use some sour-ish granny smith apples, you'd have a more tart applesauce. Use super-sweet Gala & Courtland apples, like I did here, and you'll get a more traditional sweet applesauce! Apples are naturally sweet, so you don't need to add much sweetener, if any. I chose to add a couple of teaspoons of agave nectar. You could sub the agave for honey or for a bit of brown sugar- or you can skip the sweetener all together and have just an unsweetened applesauce. Bottle some of your fresh sauce up and give it to neighbors as gifts! There is nothing better than some fresh homemade goodies, especially when they're secretly healthy ones ;) The kiddos are always applesauce fans (at least all the ones I know...) and this is a recipe you can feed them and feel really good about! Plus... it makes your house smell heavenly while it's cooking! That perfect fall, cinnamon-y fragrance! YUM!

Ingredients:

6 apples of your choosing (I used 3 Courtland, 3 Gala) peeled and cut into wedges
1 Cinnamon Stick (you can buy just 1 in the bulk section @ Whole Foods;))
3 teaspoons Agave Nectar (or honey, or brown sugar)

Step 1: Peel & cut up your apples. Dump them into the slow cooker. Top with agave and toss in the cinnamon stick. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours. Stir every couple of hours.

Step 2: Fish out your cinnamon stick. If you like chunky applesauce- you're done! For a smoother texture mash with an old fashioned potato masher, or use one of those fancy schmancy immersion blenders if you have one! If you have super picky kids who need their applesauce SMOOTH, toss it into a food processor or blender and give it a whirl. 

THAT'S IT. Told you, easiest recipe ever! Keep in an air-tight container in the refrigerator :) ENJOY!

And a little pic of me & the hubbs the day he came home... :)