APPLE BUTTER

 What do you do when you have way too many apples, and can't possibly eat them all?

I'm talking, like, your father has an apple tree in Toronto, and your best friend in Ottawa also has an apple tree - so you get tonnes of apples! That's me, if you didn't gather.

I already made apple sauce and canned it, now I wanted to explore different things.

So I decided to  make Apple Butter!!!

This is a definitely a lazy girl recipe, because it's so easy. Everything except for core-ing the apples.

I took a 3L basket and filled it with apples - that's between 5-6 lbs. If you can measure more precisely, do it! I'm using a natural variety found in Ottawa, not sure what they are: but they're red and green! You can really use any kinds of apples.

Here goes the recipe....

• 5-6 lbs of apples. Then core them, and throw them into....
• a slow cooker
• 1 tbsp cinnamon. You can  add more. I go crazy on the cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tbsp cardamom (crushed, fine powder)
• 1-1/12 cup of sugar. Better if gold or brown, but can be white sugar as well!
• optional 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• optional 1 squirt of honey

Other than the coring....everything else is super simple. Expect to spend 15-20 minutes cutting the apples. I keep the skin because I love flavour and am lazy. Fibre is also good for you!

When cored, put them in the slow cooker. You have two options depending on your time constraints.

Slow cooker on HIGH for 5 hours

OR

Slow cooker on LOW for 9-10 hours

THen, you use an immersion blender, ideally the handheld one if you're extra lazy like me, and you can just do that in the slow cooker once the time is up.

When pureed, then you keep the sauce in the slow cooker for another 45min to an hour.

Done!

Now you can pour into jars, and store. I love mason jars because they never break...and can later be canned. And I personally will do jaring/canning another day to preserve these. 

You can look that up elsewhere OR here are my Spark Notes on it....I will put mason jars into a water bath, in an active boil. making sure the water is covering the top of the jar, & this will take 20 min for apple /jam related things. And then the lid should click in place, when it's cooling, then it's really sterilized and apple to be stored for up to a year. 

If you want more of this, just double the recipe. Especially if you're on a canning spree like me.