homemade pumpkin applesauce

i’ve been wanting to make my own apple sauce ever since i made those delicious sweet potato latkes and vegan sour cream but ended up using plain old store-bought apple sauce. luckily, when i went home for christmas, my mom gave me my great grandmother’s apple sauce maker.  the thing must be at least 90 years old!

i decided to add some pumpkin in with the apples to create a sort of hybrid of pumpkin butter and apple sauce.  it’s seasoned with cinnamon and nutmeg, and slow cooked with brown sugar, vanilla and lemon zest.  the result is an amazingly warming and perfectly sweet bowl of the tastiest apple sauce you will ever experience. it’s well worth all of the work.

homemade pumpkin applesauce
6-7 apples
1 small pumpkin
2 c water
1/3 c brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp lemon zest

which apples you choose are important to your final product. if you use only granny smiths, you are going to want to use more sugar. sweeter apples like red delicious or fiji work best for making apple sauce that’s more naturally sweetened. i chose a combination of the three.

core, peel then slice all of the apples and put into a large pot. removing the skins isn’t necessary but it helps later on when you are mashing the apples and the skins don’t get in the way.

also cut up the pumpkin, removing the stem and seeds. they are much harder to remove the skin from so i just left it on. throw those in the pot too. pour 1 cup of the water over the apples and pumpkin. add the sugar, vanilla, spices, lemon zest and stir. cover and cook on medium heat.

let it simmer for 30-40 minutes, stirring frequently. about halfway through the water will all boil off and you can add the other cup of water. once it’s done cooking that water should have cooked off as well and the apples and pumpkin should be very soft and starting to fall apart.

now you can set up your apple sauce maker. you don’t need to use an antique machine like i do here. you can find food mills fairly cheap and often at thrift stores.  if you omit the pumpkin from this recipe you could probably just food process or blend the mixture.

the apple sauce maker is basically a cone-shaped colander with lots of tiny holes.  a stand holds it over a bowl.  the cooked apple and pumpkin mixture is then spooned into the colander and a smaller cone-shaped dowel presses and squeezes a puree of the mixture through the holes.

when i was done there was a small amount of pulp left in the colander – mostly the stringy fibers and skin of the pumpkin – and below there was thick, sweet and spicy pumpkin apple sauce.

the applesauce was delicious as it is warm or you can refrigerate it for later use.  it’s so thick you could also use it as a spread on toast like pumpkin/apple butter.

and if you have a lot of pumpkin and apples you can expand this recipe and make it in large amounts to have on hand.

yields 4 servings