Apple jellies (pate de fruit)

This beautiful season continues with more of the gorgeous apples of fall.

And as we enjoy our sweet bounty, we continue to find new ways to use our apples.

Today's recipe for "apple fruit paste" comes via Alice Waters

" The Art of Simple Food", though I had to adjust the recipe a bit to make it work for me. (I did make it 3 times...!)

Jellies, also known as fruit paste or pate de fruit are beautiful bite size sweet fruit treats.

Fruits such as apples, plums, and berries are slowly cooked in sugar to a concentrated puree and then cooled in a pan until set and firm. These jellies can then be cut into all sorts of shapes, rolled in sugar and served as candies or as a sweet dessert treat.

If you would like to make these you will need about

8 medium apples.

Wash, quarter and core them and leave the peels on.

Place them in a pot with one cup of water and cook over medium heat for about 20 minutes.

Remove from the heat and take the apples out (without the water) and pass the mixture through a food mill with as much as the peels as you can. It will give the mixture a redish color depending on what type of apples you are using.

Lightly rub a bit of vegetable oil on a pan (mine was 6" x 8") and place a piece of parchment paper on the bottom of the pan. Lightly oil the parchment paper too.

After you have passed the apple mixture through a food mill, return the puree to the pot and stir in 1 cup of sugar and the juice of a small lemon. Simmer this mixture on low heat stirring constantly so as to not let it stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. This will take about 1 hour so find something fun to do near the stove because you will be there for a while :). After the hour, I noticed that my mixture was taking a while to thicken... so i added 2 tablespoons of powdered pectin to help with the gelling process and continued to stir and cook for another 20 minutes.

I removed the mixture from the pot and poured it into my prepared lightly oiled pan and smoothed it with a spatula.

I let the puree sit on my counter and cool for several hours. When it was cooled I inverted the puree into another parchment lined plate and placed in the refrigerator overnight.

The next day I cut the square into bite size pieces and coated them with sugar... but you can leave that step out... they are sweet as they are!

Enjoy!