Friday, October 9, 2009

Apple Butter

When I made this apple butter, about a week ago, I had plans to take lots of pictures and do a tutorial, but, I've never made it before, so I had some trial and error, and I didn't take pictures of every step :] The apple butter came out completely delicious and I will share with you what I did, with all of the 3 pictures I ended up taking :]
Begin by cutting your 2 1/2 pounds (I used about 14 medium) tarte cooking apples. Cut them into quarters without peeling or coring them, I read that the core contains a lot of the natural pectin from the apple, and the peel has a lot of flavor, plus, I'm lazy and just figured I could pick out the peels later, even though I don't have a mesh strainer, it will be easy to get the cores and peels out right? ...
Put your apples in a pot along with about 1 cup of liquid to boil it in, I used apple cider, but you can use apple juice or water. I also added some apple cider vinegar, which is optional, I was chicken and added only 1/8 of a cup, but it smelled so good I added another 1/8 :]
Boil the apples for about 20 minutes, or until soft. Speaking of which...

This was about the point where I started panicking because the apples were so soft that they were falling out of their peels, so there was no way I could just take out the peels and cores, I was so naive at the beginning of this :]
You'll also notice one red apple that I used because I ran out of green, but I didn't realize red apples take much longer to cook than green apples, so I had to throw it out :]

Anyways, after the apples cooked, I took my plastic strainer, which is all I had, and used a wooden spoon to press all the apple sauce out.
Then I added 1/2 cup sugar for every one cup of apple sauce, I had 2 cups, so I used 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of regular sugar.
Next I added spices, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp allspice, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp cloves. I stirred it all together and put it in a glass baking dish in a 300 degree oven for about 3 hours, stirring every so often.
After I took it out of the oven, I put it through the food processor to make it super smooth, and then I canned it, I filled 2 pint jars, and about 1/2 of a 3rd jar, which I just kept in the fridge. The other jars I processed in boiling water for about 10 minutes.
Apple butter is so good, it just tastes like fall, I put it on toast all the time, and biscuits. Let me know if you try this!