Early October was cooking contest time. The Old Fashioned Apple Fest at the Page Farm and Home Museum, University of Maine in Orono, featured an apple-cooking contest, and in Belfast the fifth annual Pie and Storytelling Festival yielded 28 pies. In both contests participants from the public tasted and voted on their favorites.

The winner in Orono was 12-year-old Katelyn Keresey of Alton, a student at Leonard Middle School in Old Town with a particularly good applesauce. According to event coordinator Mary Bird, the “sensational applesauce was still warm when delivered to the contest” and “earned more than twice the votes of its next nearest competitor, a delicious Applesauce Spice Cake created by a professional baker from Bar Harbor.” In Belfast, Michelle Kelly with an Apple Ginger Pie walked off with Best Over All.

Michelle constructed her pie with many local ingredients and as many organic ones as she could muster. She didn’t have a recipe exactly but used Macoun apples from Mildel Farm in Plymouth, organic sugar, honey from Gardiner’s in Swanville, organic fresh ginger root, cinnamon, organic lemon juice and tapioca flour in the filling. Her crust was made with organic whole wheat and wheat flours and Earth Balance butter substitute. The grated fresh ginger-root and honey sweetener are good ideas, and so is adding tapioca flour. You could take your favorite apple pie recipe and tinker it accordingly.

Katelyn, like the child of the 21st century that she is, took a more scientific approach to her applesauce than most of us oldsters usually do. She has learned a bit about the science of sugar chemistry in her home economics class. Katelyn explained, “Sugar helps the apples hold together better.” She added sugar to the sauce, she said, at the point when softening apples reached the “desired chunkyness.” Mary Bird said, “A small amount of sugar added early in the cooking process meant tender bits of fresh apple created a livelier texture and brighter flavor than more smoothly pureed sauces.”

Katelyn picked apples for the sauce that morning. Mary described sample apples as similar in shape to delicious apples, small in size and light green with a rosy golden blush on the shoulders. The apples were crisp and juicy with a sweet-tart flavor.”

I have to say that this applesauce comes very close to the one I recall my mom made; we always had chunky sauce. Mom peeled her apples, but I seldom do because I like the bit of color the peels add. Clearly the crowd at the Page Farm and Home Museum liked the peeled apples.

Looking for … My neighbor Maryanne Tucker called up and asked me what I do with fennel bulbs. I said: “Not much.” Way back along, in 2005, we did have a braised fennel recipe here, and though it was good, it seems not to have caught on with us. Any other suggestions?

Katelyn Keresey’s Winning Applesauce

Yields two to four servings.

5 apples

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon sugar

1/3 cup water

Bring the water to a boil in a small pot. Peel and core the apples. Cut the apples up. Put apple pieces into the boiling water.

Mash the apples every now and then until completely mashed. Add the cinnamon and sugar. For chunky applesauce, add sugar sooner, when you have the desired “chunkyness.”