Apple Butter

Another crock pot recipe of deliciousness.

We went to our favorite little local pumpkin patch. They also have apple orchards--you can't pick them yourself but they sell their apples. We came home with a boat-load of apples. I had a few Ball jars hanging out in the cabinet. My mom mentioned apple butter and I went to town.

I loosely used this recipe--mostly as a reference point. I think it turned out awesome. We have schmeared that stuff on everything for the past 3 days. I plopped some on my oatmeal yesterday. Stirred some into the sweet potato puree last night for dinner. Slathered some on toast this morning. I would eat it directly from the jar with a spoon but that would feel wasteful. Senor is begging me not to give the other 4 jars away. I might just have to make some more. darn. Go make some. It's easy and healthy...sort of.

My version:
5-6 lbs of apples. the more variety the better. I think we had jonagolds; rome; granny smith; mutsu and maybe a few braeburn; cored and sliced/cut up in chunks. I peeled about 1/3 of mine and left the rest...call me lazy, go on. I don't care.
1 cup (maybe) of sugar--I feel like even this was probably too much. If you have good apples you really don't need that much sugar.
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1/4-1/2 tsp cloves
scant 1/4 tsp salt

Mix it all together and make sure apples are well-coated with sugar/spice combo. Dump it into your crock pot. Turn on high for 1-2 hours. Stir it all up. Turn the heat to low and let it cook.  I let mine cook from about 4p-12midnight (covered). I then put it all in the fridge and turned it back on the next morning for about 3-4 hours--covered; stirring occasionally. I then mushed it all up with a potato masher. It still was more lumpy than I wanted so I took small batches and blended them in the food processor (I left the lid off during this part and left it off after that). I continued cooking it all on low until the jars/lids were ready...the apple butter was pretty thick even warm. The consistency when it cooled off was that of pudding, almost. It's great for smearing it.

I ended up with about 5.5 cups of apple butter.