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Several years ago I posted an apple butter recipe that I had used faithfully for a few seasons. This year, after many more batches of apple butter, I have an even better recipe, I think. It’s even closer to what my Great Grandma used to make!
The changes come mostly from having found a copy of GG’s recipe, and doing lots of calculations on amounts for the ingredients. GG’s recipe was pretty basic – lots of ‘by guess and by golly’ that she was famous for!
Here’s the recipe with rough ingredient amounts for a few different batch sizes.
Apple Butter
(makes about 2 quarts)
Ingredients:
- 4 lbs apples (~ 16 cups cut up) – a variety can be used if you like
- 1 cup demerra sugar (or brown sugar)
- 1 cup organic raw sugar (or regular refined white sugar)
- 1 cup pressed unsweetened apple juice (or apple cider or water)
- pinch sea salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 1/2 tsp ground allspice
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1 lemon (optional) or 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
Directions:
1. If you will be canning the apple butter, you will need to get your jars, lids, and rings ready. In a large pot or water bath canner, cover empty jars with water and boil 10 minutes. Turn heat off and drop lids in.
2. Peel, core, and cut up the apples. Combine with the cider, juice or water with the apples in a heavy stockpan or canning pot and cook until the apples are soft.
3. Add sugars, salt, spices, and (if you’re using it) the juice from the lemon or vinegar. Continue to cook over low heat, stirring frequently (almost constantly as it thickens) to prevent sticking, until the mixture is very thick. (The desired thickness will allow you to heap it onto a spoon without running off the sides or flattening out on the spoon.) You’ll need to mash the apples as you stir from time to time to help them cook down properly – I used to use a potato masher.
4. For a finer (less coarse) butter, you may choose to put the mixture through a food processor, blender, or manual colander (like my GG always did!). [This step can also be done BEFORE you add the sugars and spices. See ** notes at the end.] Return to the pot to reheat and stir well.
5. Fill your jars/containers to 1/2 inch from the top with apple butter. Then process for proper jarring/canning/preserving (water bath, freezing, whatever you choose). We jar ours usually in quart/liter class canning jars.
6. Any apple butter you haven’t canned or frozen needs to be refrigerated and used relatively soon. The only preservative is the lemon juice (if you use it).
The length of time it takes for this recipe varies depending on how moist your apples are and how thick you want your apple butter to be. Regardless, it easily takes a few hours to make a batch of apple butter. The most time intensive part is either the peeling, coring and cutting, or the cooking down of the apples. Many recipes call for using a slow cooker for the cooking.
** For several years now we have been fortunate enough to have a steam juicer
, as well as a Fruit & Vegetable Strainer attachment for our Kitchen Aid mixer. Both of these pieces of equipment have made our apple processing a MILLION times faster and easier.
For instance, instead of coring and peeling the apples, now we only wash the apples, cut off the bruises or bad spots, quarter them, and put them into the steam juicer. The steam juicer extracts so much juice from the apples, leaving the pulp and cores and skins in the colander.
We take the pulp mixture and run it through the Strainer attachment on the Kitchen Aid. The strainer removes all the skins, peels, and cores, leaving us with perfect apple sauce. We can apple sauce, too, so we have jars of apple sauce all winter long!
With that beautiful apple sauce, I make GG’s apple butter, starting at the point where you put the sugar and spices in. Using apple sauce, instead of just cooking down the apples, makes the process of cooking down go a lot faster, as well.
At this point, I’m also using a 3rd piece of equipment which allows me the freedom to do other things while the apples are cooking down – a genuine slow cooker! We have a 7-qt Crock-Pot brand cooker. I can fill that thing full (or 1/2 full) with apple sauce and all the fixings, set it on LOW (1), and then set myself a timer to stir the mix every 30 minutes. I also use a toothpick or bbq skewer to stick in the lid to vent it a bit – this lets the moisture escape and the sauce will cook down better. Using my slow cooker, I have no scorching in a couple of years now, after I figured out that you really do have to stir the mixture a lot still.
You may choose to fiddle with the amount or kinds of sugar you put in, as well as the mix of spices. I’ve gotten “our” perfect mix of spices now, I think.
I will also double or triple the recipe at a time so I can get more done. Tripling is just about too much, though, as the mixture gets really heavy and is more likely to scorch or stick to the pan/pot.
Here are a few of my calculations for the fixings you need for different amounts of apple sauce.
4lbs of apples = about 16 cups cut up = about 10 cups of pulp/sauce
Full Crock Pot (close to 7 quarts of apple sauce)
3 cups white sugar
5 cups brown sugar
4 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp cloves
2 tsp allspice
1 tsp nutmeg (this is the one people usually leave out)
about 2/3 cup apple cider vinegar (or juice from 1 large lemon)
Makes 6 finished quarts, plus a little left over.
1/2 of my CrockPot (about 3.5 quarts of apple sauce)
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp nutmeg
slightly less than 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar (or juice from 1 small lemon)
Makes 3 finished quarts with a little left over.
ENJOY! And if you make apple butter, please let me know. I’d love to know how you like it!
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