APPLE TIPS AND FACTS

By Melinda Houser
Extension Agent, Family & Consumer Services

LINCOLNTON -- When preparing anything with apples, including pie, follow these easy tips:

--Allow about two pounds of apples for one nine-inch pie (six to eight apples).

--When cooking with apples, use very little water; none for pies, betties or cobblers, etc. Add only enough water for applesauce to prevent the apples from scorching.

--When using apples in salad, dip apple slices in lemon juice, orange juice, vinegar and water, or salt water to prevent darkening. Golden Delicious Apples stay whiter longer.

--To soften brown sugar, put hardened brown sugar in a container that has a tight cover. Place a slice of apple on a bit of waxed paper and set on top of sugar. After a few days, the sugar will be moist again.

--Apple slices can also be placed in cake containers to keep cakes from drying out, especially fruit cakes.

Follow these tips when preparing cider or juice:
--Apple juice, sterilized by pasteurization, is prepared from the first pressings of apples. It is available clarified and non-clarified and is sometimes marketed under such labels as cider or sweet cider.

--Country cider is an unclassified, unpasteruized apple product; therefore, it requires refrigeration. Normally it is prepared in a farm mill setting and sold at roadside stands.

--Hard cider is apple cider which has begun to ferment or completed fermentation. When fermentation is completed all the sugar has turned to alcohol and it is no longer effervescent.