This year is a good year for apples. The old apple tree in my parents garden nearly collapses under the weight of the fruits. So we started this Saturday to harvest. We stopped after we harvest everything we could reach with our hands or with the fruit picker. This yielded about 50 kg of fruits and there are still lots of apples on the higher branches (I would guess that there is still 100kg fruits on the tree).
We take about 12 Kilograms apples home and preserve them today in weck glasses, made chutney and apple sauce. Some of the apple sauce were used as filling in one of my favorite cakes: Rheinischer Apfelkuchen, often called Riemchenkuchen, too. The word Riemchen means little lace and refers to the lattice on top of the cake which is formed by dough stripes. It is a local speciality typical for cologne.
And what will we do with the remaining apples? Because the apple is perfect for cooking but can not be stored for more then some weeks, we will bring them to a local cider mill, where we are paid with apple juice for our apples.