Over the past week I made apple butter! Yum. I love apple butter. What is apple butter, you ask? Apple butter is like jam rather than jelly. Jelly is made from the juice of a fruit and jam has pieces of fruit in it. Apple butter is essentially apple jam.
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| The Apple Tree - Harrell Family Farm |
First we need apples! This year the apple tree was loaded down. I actually decided to make apple butter close to the end of the season, so over half of the apples had already fallen on the ground. You may notice the yellow and brown apples all over the ground.
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| Ripe Apples |
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| Picked! |
These apples are yellowish-green when they are ripe. I am not entirely certain, but I think that they are some sort of yellow delicious variety. They are very tart and good for canning.
After pealing and slicing the apples they need to cooked down in a large boiler. My mother-in-law told me that her mother taught her to "add sugar to the fruit until it looks like you have too much... then add a little more." I also added a bit of apple pie spice, which is just a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, and all-spice that you can buy from your local grocer.
So, that looked like enough sugar to me. Or, rather, more than enough and then a little bit more. Anyway, it tasted right.
Ok, now here is the trick to jams, jellies, and preserves: they must be boiled the proper amount of time. After about an hour of sitting on the stove it was fully cooked and all the sugar was disolved but it was not just apple butter. It was in-fact apple sauce. But, I did not want to make apple sauce on this occasion. I was instead making apple butter.
Once the apple sauce thickened into apple butter all I had to do was boil my jar lids, spoon the apple butter into the clean jars, tighten the jar lids, and there we have it!
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| Apple Butter! |
