Homemade Apple Cider!

[Senkusha]

It's that sweater season again, when the leaves start turning all sorts of pretty colors and that chill in the air tears right through your skin. That's right, it's time to make home made apple cider-- and it's a heck of a lot simpler than it seems.

• 8 t0 10 cups of water
• 7 Honey Crisp Apples, cored and diced (with skins on)
• 1/4 cup Sugar
• 1.5 Tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground clove

I bought a bag of Honey Crisp apples. Some recipes call for half Red and half Granny Smith for extra tart, but the Honey Crisp turns out just fine. You need to core and dice up about seven to eight apples, skins on. I like using my Instant Pot, but any slow cooker will do. Add 1/4 cup of sugar, 1/4 tsp of Ground Clove, and about 1.5 Tbsp of ground cinnamon. Nearly cover the apples with water. Slow cook for 12 hours.

Next, you're gonna take a large pot and your colander with a wooden spoon. Put the colander over the pot and pour the contents of your slow cooker through the colander into the pot. That watery stuff-- that's the cider! But you're not done. Next you're gonna mash that apple stuff into pulp. Then you're going to spoon out that pulp and press it through a fine mesh strainer. Get all that liquid out.

Save the pulp! I tossed mine in a ziplock baggie. Guess what I made the next morning? Apple Cider Muffins! (I followed a banana bread recipe, substituted the apple pulp for banana mash and baked for about 30 minutes. Delish!)

You may want to attempt to run your cider through a coffee filter to get some of the finer pulp out. I wasn't too successful with this. I like my cider chilled, but you can also enjoy it nice and hot too. The batch I just made tasted like drinking an apple pie! YUMMY!

This will be good for about four days in the fridge-- if you can prevent yourself from devouring it!