We made a delicious apple cider from scratch the other day and thought I'd share the recipe.
Ingredients
* 8-10 apples (I used gala for a less tart or intense taste)
* 1/2-1 cup sugar
* 4 tablespoons cinnamon (or 4 cinnamon sticks)
* 4 tablespoons allspice
Directions
1. Quarter your apples (no need to remove peel or seeds).
2. In a large stock pot add your apples and fill with water--just enough to cover the apples.
3. Add your sugar.
4. Wrap your cinnamon and allspice in a doubled up cheese cloth and tie, and add this to the apples and water.
5. Boil on high for one hour (uncovered) checking on it frequently.
6. Turn down heat and let simmer for two hours (covered).
7. Take off the heat after two hours of simmering and let cool.
8. Remove spices and mash up the apples to a pulp like consistency (a potato masher works well for this).
9. Once cool pour into a strainer over a large bowl. When most of the juice has drained away, put the remainder of the pulp into a doubled up cheese cloth and squeeze over the bowl until no more juice comes out.
10. (At this point you can either restrain the juice to get out the little bits of pulp that remain with a cheese cloth draped inside the strainer to catch them or just leave it like I do).
11. You can store in an air tight container in your refrigerator for up to a week or you can freeze it for later use if you like.
12. Reheat in the microwave or on the stove and enjoy either plain or you can add caramel syrup or caramels, whipped topping with cinnamon or, like my neighbors did if you like it really sweet, with marshmallows or marshmallow creme.
13. also you could make this a diabetic recipe by omitting the sugar and adding diabetic sweeteners to taste in place of the sugar or none at all.
We got the recipe off of recipezaar.com. Here is photos of what it looked like while it was cooking. Another great part is the house smelled like fall (cinnamon and apples) for almost 2-3 days after. It was such a wonderful smell.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3133/2877380941_47db027946.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3090/2877383729_d42e83c390.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3259/2878217708_7dd3361630.jpg
The only thing we did different is used a little bit more water because it started to boil away half way through. Other than that it worked great.
