Applesauce Recipes

Applesauce Recipe of the Day

2008-10-18T14:10:00.010-04:00

Well, howdy neighbor! I don't where you live, but, right now it's fall in New Hampshire. I was raking leaves, having coffee and stoking the wood burning fireplace and thought that this would be a great time to give you some recipes. Apples, applesauce, coffee. Great combos! So here are some recipes for you to try. Enjoy!

(The following are best prepared and eaten while playing The Triumphant Quartets "I Know I'm Going Home". Just a hint.)

Applesauce Gingerbread

Prep. time: 20 min

Bake time: 35 min

Yield: 18 servings (good luck with that!)

1 Cup Sweet butter or margarine

1 Cup Brown Sugar

1/2 Cup Molasses

2 Large Eggs

1 Cup Applesauce

2 Cups All-Purpose Flour

2 Tsp. baking soda

2 Tsp. ground ginger

1 Tsp. ground cinnamon

1) Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease and flour a 9 inch by 13 inch baking dish.

2) Melt the butter over low heat. Pour into a medium-sized bowl.

3) Beat in the sugar and molasses. Add the eggs one at a time and beat.

4) Beat in the applesauce.

5) Sift the flour, baking soda, ginger, and cinnamon into the applesauce mixture and stir well to combine thoroughly.

6) Spoon into the baking dish and bake for 35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

7) Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Turn onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

8) Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream (homemade of course)

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Apple Brown Betty

Prep. time: 25 min

Baking time: 50 min

Yield: 8 servings

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 Tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

6 slices bread

1/2 cup sweet butter or margarine

3 tablespoons lemon juice

4 large apples (Rome Beauty, Winesap, Cortland, Macintosh)

1/4 cup apple juice or cider

1) Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a 2 quart baking dish.

2) In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Crumble in the slices of bread.

3) Melt the butter, add the lemon juice, and stir into the crumbled bread mixture.

4) Peel, core, and thinly slice the apples.

5) Cover the bottom of the baking dish with a layer of the crumbs (about one-third of the mixture), add half the apples, a layer of crumbs, the rest of the apples, and finally the remaining crumbs.

6) Pour the apple juice over the top, cover with foil, and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the cover and bake 20 minutes longer. Serve warm.

And, oh my, will you have company!!!!

An Applesauce Business is Born

2008-10-08T09:41:00.051-04:00

How to Start a Food Business by Someone Who's Been There!

First things first

(After I started writing this article I realized it would be rather wordy so I decided to make this topic a "multi" article type of topic and will conclude it in the upcoming articles.)

Applesauce Tip: The benefits of applesauce, especially when combined with exercise and supplements are tremendous and can easily fit into your fitness diet for it's nutrition, fiber and cleansing properties.

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Today, I thought I'd do a follow up to my original applesauce article. Applesauce recipes are on the horizon, but, for now I figured that since I got the ball rolling with a “tasting” of what it was like to work for myself and, more specifically in the food industry, that today I’d elaborate a bit on some of the different aspects of how we got started.

When last we met (last blog article that is) I talked about how we came up with the business concept itself and "generally" how we moved it forward. Today and with some future articles, I'd like to touch on some of types of things that we found we had to encounter before we could ever hit the streets with our delicious product.

I Can Name That Tune

One of the first things we did was to register our name with the state. This probably wasn't all that necessary at in the beginning, but, we just felt that if we were going to put in a lot of work, and since we really liked the name and thought it was kinda catchy, we didn't want anyone to beat us to the punch and register it before we did. Plus, there's a certain amount of pride involved in knowing you've got an business entity registered. Yeah, ego boosting, but, hey, it's worth it! It wasn't free to register, but, it wasn't going to break the bank either. Nominal actually and it allowed us to keep the registration for 3 years to boot.

Mom Know Best

Since I already spoke about how we arrived at our flavors let me just hit a few basics here. We needed something that really stood out in the market which is why we stayed away from the cinnamon applesauce so prevalent in many homes. For precisely that reason, EVERYONE made cinnamon apple and we didn't want to have to compete with "mom's homemade recipe". Mom's is ALWAYS the best, believe me. It could taste like burnt asphalt, but, mom made it. Nuff said.

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We tried started with flavor combinations that we complimentary to apples. Like maple/cinnamon. Every have apple pancakes? With maple syrup? Seeeee? Good combo. Then we came up with the cranberry/orange combination. Apples and cranberries just go together. Take my word for it. The orange was added to compliment the cranberries and was a GREAT idea. The flavors are tremendous.

Pineapple/banana. Yeah. Uh, well this one was our stretch into the world of the unknown. But, it's turned out to be one of the best sellers we have. I think one of the reasons is that we generally do our store tastings with all of the applesauces in a warmed state. That’s why we like to demo our products in serving dishes that are heated. This was a deliberate decision on our part because we felt, and still feel, that the warmed up product really brings out the flavors much better. Plus, we got the added benefit of applesauce wafting through the air! And let me tell you, it's a primal smell! People can smell it as soon as they come in the front door. Instant Pavlovian response. And, yes, there were PLENTY of combinations that just didn't tickle the palate. We tried kiwi, mango, blueberry, strawberry and all combinations of them. Nothing really jumped out at us except the ones we ended up with.

One of side benefits of the flavor combinations and the warmed up aspect is that the applesauces started reminding people of things other than applesauce. For instance, it was quite common to hear someone say that the cinnamon/apple tasted like apple pie. MANY people served our product warmed up on ice cream or warmed up with a handful of their favorite granola. Beats a Twinkie any day!

Pretty As A Picture

So, after we created working recipes, it was on to the logo. This meant thinking a little more than we were prepared for. We ended up working with a graphic designer to help us move things along and this is when it got interesting. He needed to know things like, who were we trying to market to? What was the age demographic we thought would be purchasing our product? What "feeling" did we want the logo to invoke? Homemade or Cutting edge? Fun or more stoic? Did we want any type of picture or was it enough to work with just the font? Jeesh! Gives me a migraine just remembering it all.

We eventually settled on bright colors and very upbeat logo that had a funky font and a cool looking apple slice. Believe it not, it took us MONTHS to create the logo. We tweaked more things than I ever thought could be tweaked. There was font style, font size, font position, picture placement and size, color selection (thank God for women), slogan (we decided against one), how many items would be one the label, etc. MONTHS I tell ya, months!

Well this is getting a little lengthy so I’ll cut it off here. Next article I’ll deal with some things like finding the right cooking process and packaging. Plenty to be said in both of those arenas!

Applesauce Recipe Tip:

While making applesauce is hard to screw up, if you really want to make a great impression try using apple cider as the liquid for cooking down the apples instead of water. It's already concentrated and FULL of flavor. And it goes GREAT with coffee!

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Til then, go out and enjoy your local orchard. Apple picking, hay rides and snugglin’!!

Ray

Applesauce? AND Recipes? Ya I think so.

2008-10-08T00:39:00.027-04:00

Welcome to Applesauce Recipes. This site provides tips, recipes and resources about all things applesauce. If you have questions not covered in Applesauce Recipes please feel free to email your question to gilmantonnh@gmail.com

Rudy’s Fruity Applesauce, an endeavor that caters to gift basket stores and gourmet niche foods, almost never happened. If it hadn’t been for a bout with the investment industry it may never have materialized.

Several years ago I had been working at mutual fund investment firm and the stock market was doing its typical volatility thing (anyone remember Y2K?) and a recipe for backward movement for our profitability was brewing. Things were looking fairly bleak for the investment industry. The dot com boom had just busted and many investors were literally frozen with fear about trying to make any more decisions as to where or how to invest their funds. Many had great losses (albeit on paper) and were sitting deathly still.

Now, an applesauce business was nowhere on my radar, but, I had managed to save a little bit of cash and discussed with my wife the idea of doing some type of business for ourselves. With a high probability of a layoff looming in the not too distant future we decided to start looking around as well as brainstorm for ideas. It was the fall season and here in New Hampshire that means many things, but, one especially: apple picking. And apple picking meant many things apple, but, for sure it always meant applesauce.

Making Applesauce

One day I had gone to a local orchard and bought some apples, took them home, found my favorite applesauce recipe and started churning out my favorite food. I had cooked enough of it that I was giving some of it away to relatives and my sister-in-law, who LOVES our homemade applesauce, joking said that we ought to consider selling our applesauce to local gourmet stores.

It was one of those EUREKA moments! Thank goodness we had never owned a business before that time!! We began a very arduous, but, ultimately, rewarding process of trying to establish a home based business. It took us to places and people we never thought we’d ever go or meet. The research alone was brutal. Government licenses, cooking processes, jars, recipe trials and errors, creating a logo, marketing, safety procedures, sales, internet presence, etc. The list now seems HUGE looking back.

The Applesauce Name

But, we were successful! The name for our gourmet applesauce business, Rudy’s Fruity Applesauce, is a homage to my father-in-law who passed away while we were in the early stages of establishing the business. The flavors came about through extensive family food tastings to see which combinations of fruit worked with our apples.

Some of our greatest times have come from the many trade shows and product samplings at stores that we’ve been able to do around New England. We’ve been honored with doing a tasting/presentation at an inauguration for one of New Hampshires governors, at the State House! That was a hoot AND we were named as “The Best of New Hampshire” by New Hampshire magazine a few years ago.

We’ve seen folks use our gourmet applesauces in cookies, oatmeal, bread, with granola and warmed up served on ice cream! Applesauce is loaded with fiber and nutrition so ranks as a top health food.

We’re still a small business. We’ve had a few set-backs. But, we’ve revamped our website, taken a few more deep breaths and continue to march forward. Ya gotta love this country!!

Tomorrow I'll write about trying different fruit combinations. Kiwi/Pear? Coconut? Who knows!

So, there's a recipe for an applesauce biz! Or least the beginnings of one. Stay tuned.