Autumn Homemade Spiced Apple Cider Recipe, with cinnamon, cardamom and cloves makes for the perfect hot sip, or in your Autumn recipes.
What Is Apple Cider?
While apple juice can be bought year round, apple cider is an unfiltered, unprocessed or preserved pure puree of apples (core, seeds, skin and all), strained into a robust juice of whole apples.
The robust flavor of freshly picked apples, simmered in Autumn’s favorite spices of cinnamon, cardamom and cloves make this recipe perfect for sipping hot, or using in many of your Autumn recipes.
Apple Cider And Autumn
At summer’s end and Autumn’s chill, apple trees are ripe for picking.
Numerous varieties of apples, throughout America, pop up at roadside stands and farmer’s markets, that aren’t sold throughout the rest of the year.
Why? Because they have been freshly picked right here in American and not shipped in from elsewhere!
Freshly picked apples are what make up apple cider, so their refrigeration life is not terribly long and preservatives don’t go into real apple cider.
Is Apple Cider An Alcohol Drink?
Nope! Hard cider is a fermented, alcohol drink made from fermenting the sugars in apples, just as wine is made from fermenting the sugars in grapes.
While unpasteurized apple cider can ferment over time and become alcohol, fresh apple cider, within two weeks of making, has no alcohol.
If it states that it is just Apple Cider then there is no alcohol in it.
Apple Cider vs Apple Cider Vinegar
As we probably already know, vinegar can be made by fermenting a variety of things, from plants to grain.
The making of apple cider vinegar is a byproduct fermented from hard apple cider, which has alcohol.
Once the hard cider is made the process for making vinegar can begin.
Apples contain a bacteria that will consume the alcohol in the hard cider, releasing acetic acid in return.
Spiced Apple Cider
Just as we love cinnamon, cloves and cardamom in our apple pie, we also love to sip on a spiced apple drink that reminds us of other apple favorites.
The healthy aspect about making your own spiced apple cider drinks, is that you can control how much sugar goes in or simply swap out sugar all together for honey.
Apple Cider Hot Toddy
Oh Yes! Think…. Cozy fire in the evening, a brisk football tailgate, a long walk through trails covered with vibrant fallen leaves.
What would go perfect with all these scenarios?
A thermos or freshly ladled cup of simmering hot spiced apple cider with a drizzle of rum!
Sound good to you? Let me show you how easy it is to make this spiced cider, and by all means, leave the rum out if you aren’t in the mood for a toddy!
Recipes With Spiced Apple Cider
Do you like to make your own pie crusts?
Besides flour and butter, a Homemade Pie Crust always calls for a drizzle of cold water.
Try substituting that cold water for cold spiced cider.
How about a couple of slow roasted pork loins, basted with a sauce made from spiced apple cider, bacon drippings, maple syrup and a little balsamic vinegar.
Yum! Toss a few sweet potatoes in while the pork slow roasts and you’ve got a spectacular dinner, or turn this pork scenario into a Butternut Squash Pork Pie!
Apple Muffins. Yes, I am the Muffin Queen and I will find a way to put anything scrumptious in a muffin.
Rough chop some apples and pecans, use spiced apple cider with a little butter, flour and rising agents and you’ve got a fabulous fall muffin.
Autumn Apple Inspriation
Now that the Autumn season has arrived, we will venture out to find apple picking farms, or farmers markets with plenty of fresh apples and cider for us.
For sure, if we buy several bottles of cider we are bound to buy lots of apples too.
Once home, with our huge mound of autumn apples, now we have the huge task of having to core them.
I’ve got just the tip for you, and it works fast!
Ingredients Needed
- Apple cider
- Cinnamon sticks
- Cloves
- Cardamom pods
- Orange rinds
- Honey
Equipment Needed
- Large simmering pot
- Strainer
- Measuring cup
- Measuring spoons
- Stovetop or burner
More Homemade Autumn Apple Recipes To Love
For sure, come the end of August, we are all thinking about the next season of apples.
And so, I thought you might enjoy trying a few of my favorite apple recipes.
- Apple Baklava – Apple Spiced Baklava Recipe is an American twist on a popular Mediterranean pastry of nuts and spices encased in phyllo pastry.
- Apple Salad Cabbage Bowls – A Waldorf apple salad with walnuts, raisins, shredded cabbage and a cider vinaigrette served in a cabbage leaf, never looked so fancy!
- Apple Wellingtons – a buttery pastry wrapped around an entire apple, filled with nuts, brown sugar and cinnamon, simulating apples!
Autumn Homemade Spiced Apple Cider
Equipment
- Quart size closed container
- Strainer or slotted spoon
Ingredients
- 1 quart Apple Cider – 1 quart
- 2 Cinnamon sticks
- 10 Cloves whole
- 5 Cardamom pods smashed
- 1 Orange entire orange peel
- 1/4 cup Honey
Instructions
- In a medium saucepan, place 2 cups of the apple cider, the entire peels from the orange, and the spices.Bring to a boil, turn it all the way down until it just barely simmers and allow it to simmer, with a lid on, for 20 minutes.
- Turn it off and stir in the honey.
- Allow to cool and strain into a quart size container. Add the remaining apple cider, cover and store in the fridge until ready to serve.
- If sipping hot, heat up only what is needed.
Video
I believe the table... that place that draws people to gather, is the most powerful symbol of togetherness. All that happens before the table is set, the planning, the gathering, the preparing, are all an intricate part of the dance that create the mood of celebration to share with friends and loved ones.
