Top tips for an abundance of apples

Dry them

Dried Apples, along with other dried fruit, is a snacking favourite. More culinary types might cook with them, and put them in winter compotes.

Don’t bother peeling the apples. Just core and slice them thinly. Stop them turning brown by dipping the slices in a solution of lemon juice and water (try adding a bit of pineapple juice or honey for extra sweetness). At this stage, you can also sprinkle the slices with cinnamon if you wish.

You can dry apples in several ways - by using the oven, a wood stove, or a dehydrator. Turn your oven on, at a low heat (100 degrees Celsius) and place your slices on baking paper on the top or bottom racks.

Cook the slices for an hour, turn them over and cook for another hour. If you want them to crisp, leave them longer. Then open the oven door slightly and leave until the oven has completely cooled. These dried apples will keep in an airtight container for a week.

Puree them

Apple puree can be used in a variety of ways – apple crumbles, apple pies or just as it is. It can also be made into fruit leather, very similar to the type you buy in little packages to put in kids lunch-boxes.

You need a good thick puree, which isn’t too sweet. (Too much sugar will make the leather tacky when dried). Spread a thin layer of the puree onto a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Put these baking sheets into a very low oven - a fan oven is ideal. Set this about 80˚C. Leave overnight - it may need the next day as well - until it resembles chamois leather and peels away from the baking parchment easily. Roll the leather in the parchment and store in an airtight tin.

Pickle them

And you can to turn them into cider. However, cider making takes a degree of dedication (and equipment). Far quicker is apple vodka! You can always fool yourself that you’ll give it away as New Year presents.

For this you need to roughly chop about five apples and stuff them into a preserving jar. You can also add a couple of cinnamon sticks for a festive touch. Pour a 750 ml bottle of vodka into the jar, shake well and seal for between 3-14 days. Strain and pour back into clean bottles. Drink over ice or add to cider cocktails to really get your New Year going.

Juice them

Homemade apple juice is far tastier than any commercial variety, and you can experiment by mixing different apples to get a sweeter or sourer flavour.

Fresh apple juice will keep for 2-3 days in the fridge but you also can freeze it, either in sterilised bottles or plastic freezer bags. You can also pasteurise apple juice, which may kill some of its nutrients, but will enable you to keep it outside of the fridge for months. This is a quite a scientific operation, however, that requires a large pan of water, a stove and a long thermometer. The crucial element is to keep your bottles at the right temperature for enough time for the pasteurisation to occur.

Bake them

If all else fails, you can always bake, it’s a very solid way to cook with apples! Baking apples is such a British tradition that every celebrity chef has their own version of apple crumble, apple pie or apple cake. The following recipe is based on the traditional Somerset apple cake.

The apples go into the mixture uncooked and then bake to a lovely consistency inside the cake. It also means the kids can get involved preparing the apples.

Tip: Buy an all-in-one apple peeler/slicer/corer.