Food Friday: Slow Cooker Apple Butter

There has been no food for the past couple of weeks.  This makes me sad.  I have been so busy that I have not had a chance to post.  This morning, against my will, I am up MUCH earlier than I wanted to be, so I thought I would go ahead and do this before my day explodes into insanity. 

 It's funny, I adore raw apples, but once they are cooked, I will not eat them anymore, with one exception.  Apple butter.  It's sweet and cinnamony and brown and thick and yummy.  This is just about the only kind of cooked apple I will eat.  My husband liked it, and my picky teenager asked if he could just have a jar of it and a spoon, so it MUST be good!  And it's easy.  Just pop it in the slow cooker and forget about it overnight.  In the morning when you get up, your house will smell amazing and you will have this goodness waiting for you to put on toast, or bagels, or waffles, or ice cream or oatmeal or to just eat with a spoon. 


Apple Butter

(If you have some kind of apple peeling and coring gizmo, I highly recommend you use it.  All the peeling and coring made my carpal tunnel syndrome flare up.)

What you need:

5 1/2 pounds of apples, peeled, cored and chopped (I used a mixture of 3 or 4 kinds of organic apples)
1 1/2 cups of sugar (the original recipe called for 4 cups of sugar, so if you like things so sweet just being in the same room with them rots your teeth, use more.  I only used 1.5 cups and it's still a bit too sweet for my taste, but good.)
2-3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt

                                                                 5.5 pounds of organic apples

What you do:

Place your chopped apples in a large bowl, or if you are like me, just pop them straight into your slow cooker.                                                   
                                                           
Sprinkle them with the sugar, cinnamon, cloves and salt and mix them well.
                                                            

                                                                  All sugared up! 

Cover and cook on high for one hour.

                                                  Cooked on high for an hour and stirred

Stir the apples, and reduce the heat to low, cover and cook for 9-11 hours longer, until dark brown and thick, if you are awake, give them a stir every once in a while, if not, don't worry about it. 

Uncover and cook for another hour (this helps to get rid of some of the liquid, making it thicker.  YUM!)                                
                                                          
Turn the heat off, and you can either whisk your apple butter until smooth, mash with a potato masher to keep it a bit chunky, or just stir it again and leave it really chunky.  It's up to you.  I mashed mine with a potato masher. 

                                                                 Cooked and mashed

Finally, spoon the apple butter into freezer containers, leaving a half-inch of room at the top, let cool completely, cover and freeze.  Or just stand there and eat it out of the slow cooker with a loaf of warm fresh bread.  Not that we did that or anything.  :)

                                                                   Ready for the freezer         
                                                                       

 

                                                                    Fun Size! 

 

                                                          

                                           Can you find the gratuitous kitty?  She's hiding!