Went to the store the other day and saw 10-pound bags of local Washington gala apples on sale, buy one get one free. With apple season coming to a close and so many apples on sale, I figured why not try making apple butter?
For those who don't know what it is (I had no clue), after making it, I can comfortably describe it as a thick applesauce texture spiced apple spread. There is no butter involved - the name just refers to the thickness of the apple spread (spreadable like butter).
With that visual in mind, I made it in my crockpot. You can do it over the stove, but crockpots are great because they won't burn your product and you can wander away from the kitchen to do other things. Since I didn't have apple cider/juice, I made this recipe by just blending up some extra apples to make an applesauce which I substituted. I have provided both ways:
Ingredients: 2 cups apple juice/cider, 8 medium to large sized apples (or about 10-12 medium apples if you don't have apple cider for this recipe), two or so tablespoons of any kind of ground spices you like (think autumn spices like cloves, cinnamon, allspice, star anise, ginger, etc), and 1 cup brown sugar (I guess you could also substitute maple syrup, honey, or something else but I haven't tried that).
Begin with 8 apples if you're using the recipe with apple juice/cider, or around 10-12 apples if you don't have apple juice/cider (I didn't have any).
Peel and core the apples - I simply cut the "meat" off around the core with a knife, avoiding the tough core fibers which contain the seeds. Chop the cored apples into smaller pieces, maybe about 1" or less. Throw these chopped apples in the crockpot. If you are doing this recipe without apple juice/cider, reserve about 2-4 chopped apples to blend into an applesauce. This will be your "2 cups of apple juice/cider" as described in the ingredients.
Grind your spices if not already pre-ground. I simply found some bulk "cider spice" at the store which contains cloves, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and star anise. You should have around 2 decent tablespoons.
Throw the chopped apples, spices, brown sugar, and your 2 cups of apple juice/cider (or your blended applesauce from extra apples) into the crockpot.
Put the lid on, and set the crockpot to "high" until the mix starts to bubble nicely (for me this took about two hours), then switch it to "low". You will need to stir a little just to make sure everything is getting heated up nicely and prevent burning about once every hour - it's very low-maintenance in the crock pot. The original recipe I went off of said that it should be done after 10 hours or so, but I actually started this in the evening (8pm?) and left the crockpot on "low" overnight until the next afternoon (1 or 2pm?), so mine went for more like ~18 hours.
When I woke up the next morning, I actually took my hand blender and blended up the apples in the crockpot a little bit in order to get a smoother "spread". I guess you could do this right at the beginning before cooking it all down, but I did it at the end and it all seems fine.
You will be able to tell when the apple butter is done when the sugars in the apples have caramelized (turning everything a nice brown color) and the mixture has thickened with most of the water cooked off. You're looking for a thick, drier applesauce texture - don't hesitate to cook it for longer on "high" with the lid off if you need to get some more water out. The time to cook this down for will vary since every slow cooker is different, but for me it took an evening, and then better part of a morning into the afternoon (how's that for accuracy! haha).
For reference, you can note the colour of my apple butter. It looks darker than some pictures I've seen, but that could be because of more spices used, longer cook time, sugar content of apples, etc. The biggest thing you want to achieve is a thick texture.
I washed and sterilized some jam jars to seal a couple jars worth of my new spread :-) Standard canning procedures apply for those who wish to seal your stuff in jars - this stuff sets pretty nicely (i.e. not runny) in the jars. Otherwise, I guess you could simply freeze it or use it quickly. In total, I probably got around 4 or 5 cups worth of apple butter.
The library is holding a great book for me called "The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook" which I look forward to flipping through. Its different preserves are organized by season, so I can get some ideas ... if you try this apple butter recipe out, let me know how it went and any adjustments you made!
And just before I sign out, here's an awesome link to a Huffington Post video/article on how to make a homemade pizza oven for just $7 !! Technically, I think it's more like "instead of buying a $50 pizza stone, here's how to achieve the same effect for $7", but still ... at the very least the dough recipe can be useful: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/economybites/homemade-pizza-oven_b_766798.html
~ En tout cas, Bonne Chance et Bon Appetit! ~
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