Homemade Apple Cider

So what do you do when you have a fantastic idea for a recipe, but suddenly realize you're missing one of the key ingredients, apple cider? And of course you don't have a car available to you during the day to go run and grab some?

Well, if you happen to have any apples around your house, then you can make your own! Without a juicer even! I searched around online and came up with several ways to go about this, here is the one I decided to go with.

Take your delicious, juicy apples - I used two Honeycrisp because that's what I had in the fridge. However, they seemed like a really good choice. Both Todd and I had a drink of the cider and it was unbelievable. Sweet, slightly tangy...and better than any apple juice I've ever bought in the store. I read that you want to stay away from apples such as Granny, since they're tart and will require that you add sugar to the final ingredient.

Wash the apple thouroughly as you won't be peeling it. Cut and core.

Place all the slices (skin included) into a food processor and puree.

This is what you're going to come out with 

I poured the sauce onto a piece of muslin that was placed over a bowl and tied with a string. Let sit for roughly 30 minutes so that it may drain into bowl.

After you've let it set and drain, there is still going to be a LOT of juice left in the pulp. You're going to need to squeeze all the juice from the cloth/sauce. It takes just a minute to do - but you want to keep squeezing until there's no more liquid to squeeze out. 

If you've managed to get the majority of the juice from the pulp, then this is what you should be left with. Something that looks akin to a dirty diaper. Sorry for the somewhat gross picture, but I wanted you to see that this is what was left over of almost two whole apples. Not much.

And this is my final product - roughly 1 3/4 cups of homemade apple cider.

As you can see, my cider is very dark and cloudy. You can continue to strain it to filter out some of the apple particles and clear it up a bit if you'd like - make it a little prettier. Tastes the same either way! I knew I was using mine to cook with , so I left it as is. You can also spice it up a little - maybe make some Hard Apple Cider? Um, yes please!!

And that's it folks! Easy peasey! Now I'm off to actually put it in what I was supposed to be making in the first place. Pumpkin Butter!

Happy Holidays ♥