Saturday, October 2, 2010

Apple Butter

I had a great idea for party favors for Oliver's fall-themed birthday party--homemade apple butter!

I based the recipe off of one from allrecipes.com:
http://http//allrecipes.com/Recipe/All-Day-Apple-Butter/Detail.aspx

The only changes I made from that recipe are that I quadrupled the recipe, halved the sugar per batch, and blended it using an immersion blender after it was done cooking to make it smooth. Other than the peeling and dicing of about 55 apples, making apple butter was very easy. Basically, it just sits in the crockpot all night.

It was also my first time canning. Canning isn't so terrible--once you get past dealing with all the boiling water! To start, you put water in your clean jars and put them in a pan of water. Boil it for at least ten minutes to get them hot and sterile (apparently, the glass jars will break if they're not hot enough when you add your hot apple butter). Put the tips of your tongs, your ladle, and your canning funnel (if you're using one) in the water, too, so they're sterile as well. Meanwhile, put the lids (not the rings) in hot (but not boiling) water. Once your jars are hot and sanitized, you carefully remove them one at a time from the pan (I used the tongs and my Ove'-Glove), fill them with your butter, and then use a clean towel to dry/clean the top of the jar. Fit a lid on it, and then tighten the ring over the lid until it's just finger tip tight. Put it back in the pan of boiling water and continue until all your jars are filled. At our high altitude, we had to boil the filled, sealed jars for 10 minutes. After ten minutes, we carefully removed them from the pan and set them on some towels on the counter. We didn't touch them for 12 hours (the directions said to wait 12 - 24 hours). Within the first hour, we could hear the pop!pop! of the lids sealing air tight. Voila!


Pictured: Oliver enjoyed playing with the canning funnel. I took a few snapshots of the apple butter at almost every stage of the recipe. Finally, Andrew and his mom, Colleen, helped me can all the butter.

No comments: