Perhaps you have asked the question, as I have: Can you freeze apples for baking? Well, the short answer, I am happy to report, is yes!
Why freeze apples?
When apple season comes rolling in, I often find myself inspired to make all the things. I want to make pies, cakes, muffins, crisps etc… yet, I can’t eat all of that all at once, and apples don’t last forever! Freezing peeled, chopped apple pieces is an easy way to save time in a pinch AND to make sure those apples don’t go bad before you get a chance to use them.
Frozen vs. Fresh: The one catch
Often, recipes for apples count on the juice from the fruit mixing with the dough a bit, making it a little more moist. Frozen apple chunks keep all the moisture inside, in which case the recipes wouldn’t work the same way. For example, I have a coffee cake recipe that is quite dry, and the juice from the apples is what makes the mixture into a batter that bakes into the finished cake. I also rely on the juice from the apples to blend with flour and sugar in homemade (uncooked) apple pie fillings, since it causes all of the ingredients to stick together and blend better.
How to use frozen apple pieces
So, here’s the deal: Like other fruit, you can freeze apples for baking, but you would need to thaw them out before mixing them into a recipe that requires the juice to mix a bit with other ingredients, like pie. I have tried the coffee cake recipe and pie with apples that needed to thaw a bit – and both worked perfectly! Yay.
For recipes that don’t need the juice, like scone batter, cookie dough, muffin batter, or basic quick breads – You can just add the frozen apple pieces to your recipe, and they should work perfectly well.
How to prepare & freeze the apples:
- Wash, peel, and chop the apples
- Lay them out onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or plastic wrap, keeping them separated from each other as much as possible so that they don’t stick together.
- Freeze until solid, about 2 hours.
- Pour into labeled ziploc bags, and return to the freezer until use.
…And that’s it! I hope this tutorial serves you well.
Enjoy!
–Naomi
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[…] (which I do have in the recipe notes, but I wanted to say it here as well)– is that I used frozen apples for the pictures in this tutorial. Interestingly, I found that actually helped the apple chunks […]