Finding the best apples for eating, baking and sauce can be rather confusing when surrounded by a lot of varieties of apples. Here is a guide to help you find the best ones.
We enjoy apples at our house. Actually, they are my all around favorite fruit. Apples can be eaten raw, cooked, baked in a dessert or main dish and eaten as a side dish. They travel well, are juicy, sweet and tart. You can add cinnamon to them (hello!) and they taste amazing with brown sugar.
Besides my appreciation for cookies, I would have to say the apple pie is my favorite, favorite dessert.
Do you ever make apple pies? At our house we make pies and I will say the right apple is key to a delicious pie. If you get an apple that is not for baking, the pie could have a mushy texture. Will I still eat it? Oh, of course but really, who wants to eat a pie with mushy apples? Apple pie needs an apple that doesn't come apart when cooking, instead it has that nice crunch when bitten into.
The other day, my sister gave me some apples off of her tree. I was thrilled because I don't have an apple tree any more since we moved. While I used to make homemade applesauce a lot, it hasn't happened much in recent years.
The apples were boiling away and my food mill was ready to start churning out the applesauce. I even had the canning jars ready to go.
Well, the best thought out plans, right? The apples she gave me were not designed for applesauce, at all. They would not mash. After almost 50 minutes of frustration, I finally gave up and my applesauce dreams were dashed.
Unfortunately there are still a lot of apples left in the buckets. The thought was all apples would make applesauce. How hard can it be, right? Simply take an apple and you smash it. AKA: Applesauce. Apparently, I was wrong.
How to know what apple to use for baking and eating
To help all of you out (and to avoid a situation like I had!) I compiled a short list of popular types of apples to help you find the apples you want for eating, baking or making applesauce. No frustration for you.
It is a short list of the most popular apples, ones you would likely see at the store. Would you like a PDF copy to print? Print off Apple Dictionary to keep in your recipe box.
Do want some apple recipes to check out? How about:
Apple Cake With Caramel Drizzle
Did you make this recipe? Let me know!