Did you know that the majority of garden fruit goes to waste and millions of apples are thrown away everyday in the UK? Food waste is already a big issue in this country with households wasting 4.5m tonnes of food each year, therefore more needs to be done.
Here are just a few of the great ways you can use up your apples:
- Make some lovely sweet and savoury dishes with your apples (see recipes below)
- Toffee apples are very difficult to make so we just make a caramel sauce to dip apple slices into. It’s called ‘the silencer’ in our house as the dining table goes very quiet as people tuck in.
- If you have a juicer at home, apple, carrot (and ginger) juice is deee-licious. And keeps well in the freezer.
- If you are feeling ambitious you can try to make your own cider.
- Compost your unripe or damaged windfalls.
- Donate your spare apples for juice for food bank clients. My Apple Juice will take your apples to be juiced and pasteurised and given to the West Berkshire food bank to support local people in food crisis. See more information below.
- Put boxes of apples on the street and invite neighbours to help themselves.
- Proper storage is crucial so your harvest doesn’t rot before you have a chance to use it.
- If you have wrinkly or damaged apples that you don’t fancy eating, the birds and insects in your garden will be glad of them.
Apple Recipes

German Apple Cake Recipe
Thanks to Sara Jones in Lambourn for sending in this easy apple cake recipe which has been handed down by her German grandmother. Sara’s grandmother

Spicy Apple Chutney
Thanks to Catherine Hill for this handy recipe that uses up a lot of apples and is totally delicious and very flexible (ie you don’t

Bramley Apple & Curried Parsnip Velouté Soup
This recipe, supplied by Milly Fortune of Clean Slate Catering, uses up surplus cooking apples and freshly unearthed parsnips. It is also quick and easy

Almond Apple Tart
Almonds are one of my favourite ingredients, whether straight from the shell, roasted, sweetened, spiced or grounded. If you could associate foods with emotions I would link

Steamed Pudding with Apples and Mincemeat
Christmas is coming, so use up any leftover mincemeat from last year in this steamed pudding – or, if you are really organised, take the

Pork, Apple & Cider Casserole
This recipe is perfect for a winter’s day, my favourite being the official Chieveley Snow day. It’s been a couple of years since the last

Apple, Mincemeat & Marzipan Pie
I love mincemeat and I look for any excuse to enjoy it during the year. You might even have some still in the fridge left
2 Responses
Following on from the excellent article ‘what to do with spare apples’, grateful thanks must be given to the villagers of Inkpen who put out boxes of free windfall apples and other fruit they have in abundance. For the many villagers who do not have fruit trees in their gardens, this is truly appreciated.
It seems the obvious answer to a surfeit of anything – put it on the roadside with a notice ‘FREE’ and it’ll go!
Does this happen in other villages?
Hi Gilly