Apple Butter - a taste of autumn preserved!

Yesterday the DW and I went out to an apple orchard to walk around, get some apples, and some apple cider donuts. The doughnuts were sublime, light, fluffy and warm, they almost melt in your mouth, but I digress.

We ended up with 1/2 a peck each of Jonagold and Honeycrisp. DW prefers the Jonogold, I like the Honeycrisp. That's about 20 lbs of apples.  It is unlikely we'll eat that many out of hand so I immediately started looking in my canning book for recipes. I decided to make some apple butter, if you are not familiar with it, it is like very thick and highly spiced applesauce - great on toast for breakfast instead of jam or jelly. I used the Honeycrisp for this  recipe.


Canned Apple Butter  - Makes 3 pints.

Ingredients:
4 lbs apples, peeled, cored and quartered.
2 cups water
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground clove

Honeycrisp are large heavy fruit - here is the 4 lbs!

Using the super peeler, (no I don't feel like I am cheating) all I have to turn the crank! This makes very short work of the apples. All peelings go right out to the compost pile.

To make the apple puree, put the prepped apples into a large pot with 2 cups of water. 

Simmer until soft.

Run the cooked apples through the food mill with the largest screen - you want a puree not liquid.

Return the puree to the pot, add the sugar and spices.

Cook over medium head until thickened and puree will round up on a spoon. That is, if you scoops some out, it has enough body to be a small mound on a spoon.

Prepare your jars for canning following manufacturers instructions. Here is my filling station.

Fill jars, remove any air bubbles, leave 1/4" head space, adjust 2 piece lids, and process in hot water canner for 10 minutes.

As I had the water canner  already setup and had all the ingredients on hand, I went ahead and  made another batch of the Eggplant Tomato Relish. - another 6 1/2 pints.

As you can see, by this point it was dark outside. I cleaned up and called it a night.


Until next time, Eat Well & Keep digging!


The Gastronomic Gardener
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