Adventures into Apple Butter

My adventure into apple butter didn’t start out as I had planned. In fact I never planned on making apple butter at all. I wanted to make apple sauce and apple jelly. One winter when I was little we had a whole bunch of what my mom called “apple sauce” really it was more like apple pie preserves. It was quart jars of apples pealed and sliced with syrup of sugar and cinnamon. I remember really liking them, and the last few years I was toying with the idea of making some in the fall when you could buy apples on the side of the road. Then my in-laws made a whole big batch of apple jelly. I had never heard of, or tasted apple jelly. I was really good and a really pretty soft pink color. So I determined that this year I was going to make my apple preserves and apple jelly.

I went and bought two boxes of apples; I looked on the internet and found a recipe for apple preserves that looked easy enough. I spent all of one morning peeling and slicing my apples, carefully saving the peels and cores for the jelly. I added cups and cups of sugar and cinnamon and lemon juice, stirred it all up in the biggest bowls I had and packed them into quart jars, 24 of them to be exact, and processed them for the amount of time the recipe called for. I was on a roll! While doing that I boiled my apple peels and cores, strained them and added sugar and pectin and bottled those too. My kitchen was a mess. Sticky sugary counters and floors, a sink piled high with dishes, it was hot with all the canning and boiling water. I was tired, but satisfied, look at all the food I was preserving and packing away for my family…what a great mom I was!

Then everything crumbled. None of my jars of apples sealed, none, not a single gal-durn blasted jar! (Do you like my pioneer swear words? Ha!) So here I am in my steamy sticky mess with 24 quart of apples not sealed! (I think this is where I burst into tears and drank a whole two litter of diet coke and ate all the chocolate I could find) Then to top things off my jelly didn’t, well, jell! So now I have 24 quarts of unsealed apples and 24 pints of un-jelled apple jelly! (This is where I call Mike, in tears, pulling my hair out, wishing I were a drinking woman, and tell him he better bring home dinner or I just might need to be committed that very night)

I cried over the computer to my friend Katie and she calmly sympathizes with me and says “why don’t you make apple butter?” Apple butter? Hmmmm…..”How do I do that” I ask. She tells me to dump all my jars of apples in a crock pot and let it cook for about 12 hours, until it cooks down and thickens up. Then put them in pint jars and process them like I would jam. So that is what I did. I let it cook over night, and the house smelled wonderful that next morning! We had warm apple butter on pancakes and I was sold! I did another batch that day and ended up with about 24 pints (we are already half way through it.) I will defiantly be doing apple butter again. As for the apple jelly? Well, I have 24 pints of apple syrup in my basement (I know there is a way to re-process the whole batch and add more pectin and such, but I just didn’t have it in me, maybe another day) if you would like to try some, let me know, I will let you have a jar, or two, or three…. So there you have it, my adventures in Apple Butter.So here is the recipe, as best as I can remember it, the thing about apple butter is that it isn’t an exact thing, you can adjust to your preference.

Big box of apples, pealed, cored and sliced (you can save the cores and peels to make apple juice or apple jelly, however you ladies are on your own with that!)
Lots of sugar (4 to 5 cups)
½ cup lemon juice
Cinnamon to taste
Nutmeg to taste.

Mix it all up, taste it, adjust it to your liking. Throw it all into a crock pot (I wouldn’t prepare more apples that your crock pot can handle, just do it one batch at a time) or you can throw it into a big pot on the stove, just be careful it doesn’t get too hot. Cook it on low for about twelve hours until it thickens to your preference. Spoon it into pint jars and process (I used the cold pack method) 30 minutes. I would think that you could freeze it too, if you didn’t want to go to the trouble of processing it. Or you can make small batches and just keep it in the fridge. This is a very forgiving recipe!

Apple butter is good on, pancakes, scones, biscuits, French toast, peanut butter sandwiches, toast or rolls. It is good mixed with yogurt, Cottage cheese or granola. I like it warmed up on scones and pancakes.

I hope you all like it!