Book Club Applesauce

My wife ate some very tasty homemade applesauce at a friend's home during her book club a few months ago. She raved about it, and dutifully got the recipe to make for Thanksgiving. Well, the applesauce was dynamite. Bravo wifey, friend, and book club.

The recipe:

Ingredients -
15-20 apples, any variety
Apple cider
Cinnamon sticks, mulling spices, vanilla bean (optional), orange slices (optional)

Cooking Instructions -
Peel, core and chop the apples into pieces. The variety doesn't matter, a mix is nice (more on this in a minute*). Throw the apples into a pot or crockpot with some apple cider. Use enough cider to cover about half of the apples. Add some sticks of cinnamon, mulling spices, vanilla beans (other complimentary spices also work). You can add cranberries, cherries, etc and these options add deliciosity. Orange slices work too. Simmer the mixture, stirring occasionally, mashing the apples as they get softer until you get the consistency you like. This takes about 2 hours, but if you don't have that much time, just simmer the apples until they are soft, 1 hour and blend.

*When my wife made it, she added orange slices (removed before serving), used three types of apples (Fuji/Gala, Granny Smith, and Macintosh). She did not blend it and the tree types of apples added different, and enjoyable textures to the dish. I'm sure it would have been great blended too.