An Apple Afternoon

This is what I got started on after we had finished school for the day and had some lunch. I washed all of the apples and then used that nifty apple corer/slicer to cut them up. That is one of the best gadgets I have in my kitchen! It saved me a lot of time. After I took this picture and was looking at it I realized that most of the items in this picture are gifts from family. The big bowl is from Scott's Grandma Betty. It was a wedding gift. The yellow canner is from my mom and the cutting board is from my mother-in-law.


This is the one jar of applesauce that I made. The flavor of it was really good and the kids loved it but I wasn't going to get as many jars of it as I had hoped that I would. It was a lot of work to get to this point and since I can buy applesauce on sale at a great price at the store I thought that it would be better to take the applesauce and add sugar and spices and make apple butter instead.

The wood apple in this picture was carved by our neigbor. It is really neat. He gave it to Elle and she is sharing it with me in the kitchen. He made a fish for Thomas that we will take a picture of and put on his blog.

Here is the apple butter simmering on the stove. It simmered and simmered and simmered for a little over 2 hours! Thomas and I took turns stirring it because it pretty much had to be stirred constantly during that time. The house smelled so good yesterday afternoon!

The finished apple butter! Every single jar sealed so I was happy about that. I will be giving some away as Christmas gifts to Sunday School and swimming lessons teachers.

We toasted up a piece of bread and tried it out. My taste testers gave it their seal of approval! I think that this will have to become a tradition in the fall for us now. I really enjoyed making it and would like to try it with pears as well. Maybe this winter!

Here is the recipe that I used. I combined a couple of different recipes that I found on the internet and came up with this one -

10 lbs apples
3 cups fresh pressed apple cider

Boil this in a large pot until apples are soft. (In the picture you can see that I used water and too much of it too. Next time I will boil the apples in the juice and use it in the butter rather than throwing the apple flavored water down the drain like I did this time.)

Press the apples through a food mill. Put 13 cups of applesauce mixture in a heavy bottomed pot. Add -

5 cups granulated sugar
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp allspice
3/4 tsp ground cloves

Simmer on medium low heat, stirring regularly until mixture reduces to a thick, buttery consistency. Pour into hot sterilized canning jars, water bath, and enjoy.