I love this recipe. It’s easy and makes a deep, dark and rich apple butter. I was wondering what to do with the many, many, many CSA apples in the fridge when I stumbled across Lolly’s Food for Fall post – apple butter it would be!
I chopped up a whole lotta apples…
Put them in a pot with some CSA cider…
…And cooked them ’til they were soft.
I puréed the apples in my food processor and added some maple syrup and spices.
The mixture went into the crock pot…
…Until it was dark, rich and delicious!
Apple Butter
Recipe courtesy of The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest
- 10 large tart apples (about 5 lbs) – some of my apples were sweet
- 2 cups apple cider
- 3-5 cups sugar I used 1/4 cup of maple syrup and it was plenty sweet
- 3 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 3/4 tsp. ground cloves
- 1/2 tsp ground all-spice
- 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
Wash, core & quarter apples. Cook slowly in cider until tender.
Blend mixture in a food processor. You should have about 12 – 14 cups of pulp.
Add sweetener and spices to taste.
Cook 350°F oven or slow cooker for 6-8 hours, stirring often – I let mine go for almost 13 hours in the slow cooker. Test for desired thickness by spooning mixture onto a cold plate. If no liquid oozes around edges, it is thick enough. Ladle into jars.
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