Cooking Crabapple Sauce

Some friends from church had a lot of leftover crabapples from their tree(s) this year, so they offered us a box to take home.  Crabapples smell a-mazing, and as we don't grow them ourselves we were excited to try something new.

The first time I had heard of crabapples was in the Trixie Belden girl detective series, one of my favorites growing up.  Trixie's home was called "Crabapple Farm."  :)  Though crabapples have fallen out of fashion, there are still various recipes floating around on the web, from crabapple vodka to pickled crabapples.  We decided to make apple sauce, basically following this YouTube recipe.  Cinnamon, vanilla, sugar, and a pinch of salt.  Vanilla is key! 

The color is a nice rosy red, and the taste is similar (better, maybe) to our transparent apple tree apples.  It would be good over vanilla ice cream, but it's great by itself, too!