Fall Food Favorites: Apple Butter

Just in case you didn't see my guest tutorial last week over at The CSI Project, I'm reposting it here for you today!


Hello fellow CSI Project fans!  I'm Angie from The Cellar Door Stories, and I'm so excited to be here for Fall Food week!  True, when you think of fall food, pumpkin is probably what immediately comes to mind.  But for me, nothing says early fall like apples!  We live close to several apple orchards and have a family tradition of picking apples each year.  Along with homemade applesauce, I like to try out a few new apple recipes each year.  This year I decided to try apple butter, and I'm going to be sharing my recipe with you today!

A friend had mentioned to me that she made apple butter in her slow cooker.  I was intrigued and decided to try it out myself.  Her recipe started with whole apples, and I had already turned my mountain of apples (1 1/2 bushels) into applesauce (go here to see how it's done), so I needed to improvise a little.  I scoured the internet and my recipe books for ideas, and ended up creating a recipe that is kind of a mish-mash of about approximately 36 other recipes I looked at!

First, gather all your ingredients and dump them into your slow cooker (I recommend spraying your crock with cooking spray ~ makes clean-up a LOT easier).  I used the following, but you can definitely tweak the amount to your taste:  10 cups applesauce, 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup white sugar, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground cloves.

I cooked my apple butter on HIGH for a total of 12 hours.  By the end of the 12 hours, it was time for me to go to bed and I didn't want to leave my slow cooker on any longer.  I turned it off but left the apple butter in so it kept cooking.  Yes, that seems like a long time!  It takes a long time for some of the liquid to cook out.  Your time will vary depending on the amount you are making and your slow cooker.  Stir occasionally to make sure your applesauce doesn't scorch.  I took the lid off for the last 5 or so hours.

Here's what my apple butter looked like after about 6 hours...

And here's what it looked like in the morning...you can see a lot of the liquid has cooked out, and it's a few shades darker.

I spooned the apple butter into jars - from my original 10 cups of applesauce, I ended up with 8 jars of apple butter.  I still haven't figured out the whole canning thing, so mine went into the freezer, but this could definitely be canned!

Bonus ~ who doesn't love homemade food?  This could make a great little gift for someone!  I decided that as a gift, the jars were looking a little too plain, so I added a raffia bow and some scrapbooking paper stamped "Made Especially for You!"

Add a loaf of homemade bread, and you have a perfect hostess gift for your next fall night out!

Thanks to the CSI Project girls for having me today ~ hope to see you all over at The Cellar Door Stories, where I love to blog about DIY & crafty ideas, food, family (including our adoption journey), frugal tips, and any other random thing that crosses my mind!