After having an apple butter smoothie while visiting the Cashmere Cider Mill this summer I had the grand idea to make apple butter myself. This was my first adventure into canning by myself.
Delicious apple butter smoothie!
So where do you think I looked first for a recipe? On Pinterest of course! I found this recipe that I liked. I decided to use the stove top method even if it meant setting aside a whole Saturday to do so. Although a lot of the recipes on Pinterest were for crock pot apple butter (maybe next time!).
It happened to work out that we got a lot of apples from my great aunt. So I peeled, cored, and diced the apples. I threw them all into the Dutch oven pot on the stove and let them cook down. Once they were mushy I took my immersion blender and made it look like nice smooth applesauce. I decided to use agave nectar instead of sugar as a sweetener; then I added cinnamon, nutmeg, and ground clove. Next step was to set it to medium-low and let it cook down, but don't forget to stir every 20 minutes. As it cooked down the house started to smell delightful! The whole cooking down process took about 5 hours. While the apple butter was cooking down I went on the hunt for some small jars and lids in the garage, and washed them. By the end of the process I filled four jars, sealed them, labeled them, and they're stored in the garage for later use.
All canned and ready to eat another day!
I tend to be a homebody, so spending a whole day at home stirring the apple butter every so often while working on a sewing project (which is my next blog post!), knitting, and reading wasn't a huge hassle to me. In fact I'm hoping to make some pumpkin butter as well since pumpkins are on sale.
