Instant Pot No-Peel Cinnamon Applesauce

Photography // 23Twenty Media

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One of the things that I love most about the Autumn season is going apple picking with my family. Hayrides, warm, apple cider, and apple cider donuts make the time warm and fuzzy as we make memories together. After a recent trip to a local orchard, we decided to turn all of the apples that we so carefully picked into some yummy cinnamon applesauce. Applesauce is a staple in the Snack Department for my three kids. I’m constantly buying applesauce because they love it so much, and honestly I do too! The touch of cinnamon in applesauce just really does it for me, so when we were deciding what to do with our apples, it only made sense to make cinnamon applesauce.

Since we all picked the apples together, we all made the cinnamon applesauce together. I mean, isn’t that how the saying goes, ‘A family that picks apples together, makes cinnamon applesauce together”? Well, this recipe is so simple and easy for even the littlest ones to participate in creating. I tried to split up the tasks equally and allow each child to do each step together when appropriate so that there were no problems between the siblings. 

Now, you can absolutely cook this on the stove or in a slow cooker, but the kids wanted to eat the applesauce ASAP, so that meant using my Instant Pot Duo 6-quart. In fact, we tripled the recipe and had to use two Instant Pots! (Everything filled up both 6-quart Duos up to the fill lines.) This is such a great recipe to make with your kids and I love that it only has 3 ingredients: apples, cinnamon (sticks and/or ground), and water! We used Honeycrisp, which are my favorite, and a few Pixie Crunch apples because those were the varieties available for picking at the orchard at the time we visited.

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I assigned the task of washing the apples to my 7-year-old and my husband. I recommend washing your fruits and veggies with a “veggie wash”, either one that can be store-bought or one that is DIY. You don’t want any pesticides or dirt in your applesauce, right?

Once the apples were washed, I had the fun task of cutting all of those apples. (Totally being sarcastic, although it was kind of fun initially.) Now, before this step, you could peel all of the apples first, which is what I usually do when making this recipe. However, I decided to keep the skin on this time for extra nutrients and fiber. Trust me, if you leave the skin on, you won’t even notice it in the smooth applesauce. 

Now, you don’t have to cut the apples so small, because once they are cooked it doesn’t take much for them to break down and smooth out. I roughly diced the apples into medium-sized pieces and ended up with a mountain! The kids were totally mesmerized. 

I had the kids jump back in to put the huge mountain of apples, water, and cinnamon sticks into both Instant Pot’s Inner Pots. You could totally add sugar of your choice for additional sweetness, lemon juice to prevent quick browning, and other spices (like nutmeg, cloves, all-spice, etc) for flavor, but we wanted to keep things nice and simple.

Once all of the ingredients were in the Inner Pots, I set my Instant Pots to Manual Mode and cooked the apples for 6 minutes on High Pressure. Then once they were done cooking, we carefully blended everything with an immersion blender. You can also use a blender for this part, but just be very careful because things will be super hot at this stage.

I couldn’t find my larger mason jars, so I ended up carefully pouring the HOT applesauce into glass storage containers. The kids could not wait to try their culinary masterpiece, but I had them wait several minutes for their taste test. I however braved it out, and after a quick sampling, I decided to add some cinnamon for a richer cinnamon flavor — because I LOVE cinnamon! After that, it was perfect! 

Now, my kids insisted on eating the cinnamon applesauce hot. I mean, I guess I couldn’t blame them because the smell that filled our home was SO amazingly delectable and had “Hello, Fall!” written all over it. And their thoughts? “100% Yes!” They loved this applesauce just as much as, if not more than the store-bought stuff, because they made it. Below I’ve written the full recipe out so that you and your kids can make cinnamon applesauce too! After you’ve made it, please come back and share with me your results! How did it taste? What did you add or omit? I can’t wait to hear it!