Warm Apple Cider
Warm & Sweet Liquid Comfort
Today I am showing my version of a caramel apple cider. It uses a caramel sauce as a base to which we will add our own homemade apple cider. This stuff is sweet, but not too sweet. By making the cider from scratch, you can make a caramel apple cider that isn't overly sweet. It has the added benefit that making this will make your whole house smell amazing.
Now before I get started, the nomenclature of what apple cider is, is very region dependent and is confusing, so it’s worthwhile to present some clarification on what I actually mean by apple cider. To anyone living outside of North America, apple cider is what you get from fermenting the juice of an apple giving an alcoholic beverage. What we will be making here today is American apple cider, which refers to the unfiltered juice created from pressing apples, if you filter it, you get apple cider.
You may be questioning for our caramel apple cider, why we don’t just purchase apple cider from the store and add the caramel, and that is a good question. Store bought ciders tend to be extremely sweet already, so adding caramel into them will make them sickly. Also to preserve the cider and allow it to be stored for a while, these ciders tend to have extra acids added, which makes them overly tart. If we to add caramel to the already in my humble opinion too sweet cider, we would end up with a concoction that could instantly cause cavities and diabetes. For these reasons, we are going to show to make our cider from scratch.
Detailed Instructions:
Making the Apple Cider
So first we are going to start by making some apple cider. So first thing we are going to need is 12 apples, preferably somewhere between sweet and tart, I am using honey-crisp apples here, which is middle of the road. We just need to cut these into slices. I like to cut them into quarters, then cut diagonally to remove the core, then slice the quarter into eighths. Once cored and sliced, we can place them into a bowl. Once we have cored and cut our 12 apples, we can move onto the next fruit ingredient in our cider which is orange. Orange is a somewhat controversial ingredient, but after a long cook time, the orange flavor will mellow out and add a nice back subtle flavor that warms up the whole flavor of the cider. It is however an optional ingredient. If you do decide to use orange I just cut the orange, peel and all into eighths and added it to the apples.
Once we have all of our fruit prepared, we can place it all into a large pot. To which we are going to add about half a gallon or 2 liters of water. It should come just up to the fruit. We can turn on the heat to high and bring this up to a boil. While this heats up, we can add in some spices. The only mandatory spice I would say is one to two cinnamon sticks, but feel free to add some cloves, and all spice. You do run the risk of this tasting more Christmas-ey than Fall-ey. Once this is up to a boil, we can turn the heat to low, place the lid on and let this cook for anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. In which time your whole house will smell super festive.
Making the Caramel Sauce
While the cider simmers we can turn to the next part of this recipe which is the caramel component. Making caramel seems daunting, but in fact it is pretty simple to make. Since cooking sugar can go quite quickly it helps to prep the ingredients we will need, in our case we need 2 tablespoons of butter and ⅓ cup of heavy cream. We will set these off to the side for when we need them.
Once we have those ingredients prepped we can begin making the caramel sauce by adding one cup of sugar into a pan and heating it up over medium heat. The sugar will begin to melt .Try not to stir it, stirring melting sugar can result in the sugar crystallizing and not properly turning to caramel. Once the sugar has completely melted and turned golden, we can add 2 the butter and heavy cream. It will probably react violently, so pour it in carefully. Hot sugar burns are not fun. At this stage, we actually do want to stir, the dairy in to the melted sugar, and boom, caramel sauce completed. We can set this to the side and wait.
So after an hour or so your simmered fruit should look like soft and cooked. The apples will be completely tender and it will just be a matter of straining the liquid from the fruit. After straining, we want to get every last drop of cider out of the fruit. So I used a wooden spatula to really press some of the pulp of the fruit into the strained liquid. I did this for all of the fruit, leaving a nice bodied cider.
Now just a quick note, Don’t throw away the pulp that remains. blending this will give you a pretty nice apple sauce to work with, and I actually made a nice bread from mine.
Once we have our delicious cider, you should notice it’s a bit unsweetened, so as you may have guessed it’s time to pour our delicious caramel sauce into the cider. Make sure you give it a good stir to mix it in and you will notice that your nice spiced cider will go from a 6 to an 11 out of 10. I wanted to serve mine warm so I brought mine back up to a nice warm temperature for serving. You can however store this in the fridge and drink it cold, or heat it up later for a fun friendly gathering.
And that’s it!
Condensed Recipe:
Ingredients:
Apple Cider:
12 Semi-sweet apples (I used honeycrisp)
1 Orange
4 Cinnamon Sticks
2-3 Cloves
Caramel Sauce:
2 Tablespoons [30 mL or 28 g] of Butter
1/3 cup [80 mL] of Heavy Cream
1 Cup [200 g] of Sugar
make the cider, cut the fruit into eights, removing the cores of the apples. Add all of the fruit to a pot with 1/2 gallon (2 liters) of water, and bring up to a boil.
Add spices and reduce the heat til the cider is simmering. Allow to boil for 1 to 2 hours, or until the fruit is completely tender.
While the fruit is cooking, begin the caramel sauce. Over medium heat, melt the sugar and heat for 30 seconds in a saucepan. After which point, add butter and cream. Set to the side for later.
After the fruit is done, strain fruit from liquid. Pressing the fruit will yield more cider. The pulp can be saved and used to make bread.
Add Caramel sauce to strained cider and voila! Best enjoyed warm.
Enjoy!