Apple Sauce

I have an apple tree in my garden. It is small and gnarled and the apples are disgusting, sour and kind of powdery. In the eleven years that I have lived here it has usually offered up such small, manky apples that I assumed it was some kind of crab apple. But last year the apples were a little bigger and this year the tree surpassed itself with a big crop of good sized apples. As I was sitting in the garden one day and pondering about these apples and what a shame it was that they were not edible I suddenly wondered - are they actually cooking apples? 

So tonight I gathered together some of the apples and made them into apple sauce. I've written the recipe below.

Apple Sauce

4 x small cooking apples
4 x tablespoons of sugar
4 x tablespoons of water
good squeeze of lemon juice

Method
Put the water and lemon juice into a pan.
Peel, core and finely slice the apples and put them in the pan with the water, mixing to ensure all the slices are coated in the water and lemon juice to stop them turning brown.
On a low heat, bring to a simmer and then put a lid on the pan and cook for 5-10 minutes depending on your apple variety.
Stir and check occassionally to ensure the apples are not burning or sticking to the bottom of the pan.
When the apples are soft and can easily be mashed with the back of the spoon, they are ready.
Mash the apples with the spoon until you have a more or less smooth paste.

Serve hot or cold, on its own, with pork or with rice pudding!

It turns out that my apples make very nice apple sauce!