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You remember the Aussie Barbecue that I went to on Cup Eve? Well, since we’re “the ones that do all the cooking”, we wound up taking home most of the leftovers. One of which was an entire gallon (nearly 4 litres!) of apple juice. I don’t drink fruit juice normally, since I prefer to spend my calorie intake on food, and I normally drink water, tea or coffee. Or martinis (not really).
On the other hand, Tobias, the Doctor, and our friend B absolutely love anything to do with apples, so they suggested that I make some apple cider for Christmas. I decided to go one step further.
Well, actually, no – it was more when I was looking up recipes for cider that I came across appelstroop, a Dutch apple syrup made from reducing apple juice to a glaze, and adding sugar and molasses. There are a couple of recipes floating around online, so I combined what I thought were the best parts of all of them.
Appelstroop – Dutch Apple Syrup
Makes 3 cups (~3 small jars). Practically no time to prep, 20-60 minutes cooking time.
4 cups apple juice – the best quality you can get, at the very least, get something with no added sugar, preservatives or colour
1 cup white sugar (the type matters, read on)
2 tbsp Molasses
Bunch of whole spices – I used 2 cinnamon sticks, 6 cloves and a couple of pieces of maceGear
Large, wide saucepan
Heatproof spatula
Glass jars
Baking tray
Small strainer
Using the widest, heaviest pan you have will reduce the amount of cooking time for this recipe. Wide, because this will increase the surface area of the liquid, hence speeding up evaporation. Heavy, because you want even heat distribution to reduce the chance of burning the syrup.
I picked up some nice looking glass jars from a discount shop nearby – since these were going to be Christmas presents, I had ideas of decorating the jars with ribbons and cute things… yeah, that totally happened.
Start by pouring the apple juice into the cold pan. I was making four times the original recipe, so I actually wound up doing this in batches.
Pour in the sugar, and carefully stir to start dissolving it. Put the pan on to medium heat, and continue stirring until it’s all dissolved.
The reason why the type of sugar matters is because:
- Different types of sugar have different sized crystals – if you used caster sugar, you’d wind up using far more, if you use raw sugar, you’d wind up using a bit less
- Raw, demerara or muscovado sugars (basically all the brown ones) have either added or natural amounts of molasses in them. Since you’re also adding molasses to the syrup, you might want to reduce that amount slightly so you don’t overwhelm the flavour of the apple juice
Don’t overfill the pan, or stirring will become difficult!
When the sugar has dissolved, add the spices and bring the heat up to high. You can cover the pan to help it come to a boil quicker, but once it’s come to the boil, remove the lid so it can start reducing.
Measure out your molasses. I first saw these plunger measuring cups on Alton Brown’s Good Eats, and managed to find a similar set at a random homewares shop. It’s much more useful for sticky ingredients like molasses, honey, peanut butter, maple syrup… All the good things in life! If you don’t have a plunger, you can spray the inside of a normal measuring cup with no-stick spray or cooking oil spray, but I find the taste of the spray carries over into the food you’re making.
While the syrup continues to reduce, wash and dry the jars and lids thoroughly. Preheat your oven to 200C, and then bake the jars for 20-25 minutes to sterilise them. If your lids are oven safe, you can sterilise them along with the jars, otherwise, a good long soak and scrub in hot water should be fine.
Ideally, you’d want to time it so that the syrup is done shortly after the jars have been sterilised, and still warm from the oven. Since I was doing this in batches, I covered the jars with a clean tea towel and put them aside while I was taking pictures. As long as the jars are not stone-cold, and the syrup not literally boiling hot, you shouldn’t have any problems with thermal shock (ie: glass exploding from heat).
Safety – it’s what’s for Christmas!
Eventually, the syrup will reduce down to about half its original volume. This took about 40 minutes to reduce this far.
Turn off and remove the pan from the heat, and stir in the molasses. If you kept the measuring cup near the stove so it got warmed, this should be even easier to pour in.
Let the appelstroop cool slightly, then strain it into your jars. This is very sticky stuff, so keep a sponge around to wipe up any spills!
Let the syrup cool inside the uncovered jars until they are room temperature, then lid up, and put it in the fridge. Appelstroop will pretty much keep indefinitely in the fridge, but as always, if you see any furry or splotchy growths, quietly (but responsibly!) dispose of it.
This looks delicious! I’ve seen it at the Dutch store here but never tried it before :)
Interesting recipe. Could you also provide the amount of the ingredients…how much sugar, molasses, etc.? Thanks.
How very odd! I thought I had posted the quantities, but they seem to have gone walkabout. I’ve edited the recipe in the post, but here are the ratios for you:
Thanks for letting me know they didn’t come up!
Thanks. I will pass your recipe on to my sister. She has been looking everywhere for an “applestroop” recipe. She thought sugar beets were part of the secret ingredient. I thought a generous splash of whiskey. I guess we will have to settle for molasses. Appreciate your responding to the earlier request.
To be honest, I haven’t had authentic appelstroop before, so I don’t know exactly how it’s “supposed” to taste. I’d think the beets might lend a more “raw” flavour, similar to the reason why I used molasses. I have no idea how you’d process the beets in this recipe, though.
The whiskey would depend on when you actually add it in. If you add it in at the start, I’d say you might not be able to taste very much of it by the time it reduces to a syrup consistency. If you want a more “woodsy-oak” type of flavour, I’d add the whiskey double up on the cinnamon sticks and add a splash of good vanilla extract at the end with the molasses. Or add the whiskey about ~5 minutes before you finish reducing, but that will take some guesswork.
Good luck! Let me know how you go with it :)
Thanks so much for the recipe! I’ve been looking around for a close to, or authentic applestroop recipe! I do have one quick question; how sticky does this turn out to be? The applestroop I’m looking for gets to be thick like butter when it’s kept in the fridge.
Hey, glad you found it helpful! It’s pretty sticky, but more like a honey-like consistency rather than butter. I keep mine in the fridge and it doesn’t get much thicker after reducing it. Hope you find what you’re looking for!