Apple Butter

I stumbled upon a twenty pound box of apples a few weeks ago for only $10.  For us Alaskan folks, that's a helluva deal!  Of course I bought two.  But knowing my husband well enough to know that he'd flip his lid if I rolled up with forty pounds of apples, I gave one of the two boxes to one of my favorite domestic divas because I know she'd make magic with them!  As for me and my apples, we hurried home and got rinsed with nice cool water.

I chunked about a third of them up, peels, stems, cores, stickers, and all and threw them into a large pot with about an inch of water.  I covered the pot and let them simmer until they were soft when pricked with a fork.  Sorry I don't have more pictures of this process, I'm not used to this blogging, yet...

I ran the soft apples, juice and all, through my grinder/mill attachment on my Kitchen Aid.  I had a hand food mill that I used to use, but it would have taken about thirty minutes of hand cranking for a batch this size.  The Kitchen Aid attachment ran through them all in about ten minutes and my forearms didn't turn to Jell-O! 

At this point you have some choices, can it as applesauce, or keep going.  This time I kept going, but had I wanted applesauce, I would have put the still warm sauce into sterilized jars and processed in a water bath for about twenty minutes.  I decided to walk on the wild side...

I put the applesauce in the crock pot with about two cups of sugar and some cinammon, turned it on low and let 'er go for about twelve hours.

You're probably asking yourself, "what's up with the sticks, Bridget?"  I'm glad you asked.  I like a clean kitchen, and I like to keep it simple.  In order for the applesauce to cook down and thicken up, the condensation has to escape from the crockpot.  If you leave the lid off you'll have an applesauce splattered mess of a kitchen.  Instead, I put a couple of bamboo skewers across the crock and put the lid on top of those.  It contained all the mess, but let the moisture escape. 

Let your applesauce cook down 10-12 hours (I usually leave it overnight).  When you return you'll find there is about half as much as there was and it's a darker color.  At this point, I add enough applesauce to fill the crock back up to about an inch of the top, another cup of sugar, some more cinnamon and a teaspoon or two of vanilla.  Put the lid back on the skewers and let it cook for a few more hours.

While still warm, ladle into sterilized jars.  Process in hot water for twenty minutes for pints, 25 for quarts.  This batch yielded about 13 half pints!