Sunday: Apple Butter

This was an idea Andrea and I had for a food gift for Christmas. I hadn't done apple butter before, so this was an adventure/learning experience. For proportions and basic technique I used the recipe in The Joy of Cooking.

The first time I tested this (much smaller quantity), I used a sweet apple and was not real pleased with how the apple butter turned out (it also didn't help that I added the optional lemon zest and had the inspiration of adding a bit of molasses: those two overpowered everything else and you couldn't taste apple at all). This time we picked out a mixture of granny smith and mutsu apples; I think the tartness of the apples really improves the apple butter.

Start with a goodly quantity of apples (about 5 pounds). Wash them, quarter them, and remove the cores and stems. Then throw them in a large pot with enough water to cover the bottom by about 1/4 inch, cover the pot, and let it simmer (low heat) until the apples get soft - an hour or more. Run the apples through a food mill (fine mesh) into a second, ovensafe, pot. Measure the pulp.
Add the spices: for about 5 cups of pulp, I added 2 cups of sugar, 4 cinnamon sticks, 6 cloves, and 6 allspice berries (crushed with the side of a knife).
Put the pot, uncovered, in a 275 degree oven for a good, long time, maybe 4 hours, maybe longer. Take it out every once in a while and give it a stir. (Theoretically, you can do this step in a crockpot too, but we don't have a crockpot.)
The apple butter is done when it seems appropriately thick and the color has changed to a nice caramel brown.
We then canned the apple butter in 8 oz jars (20 minutes in the canner).
We ended up with 6 jars, which isn't enough, so we'll be doing this again next weekend. :-)