Bounty
My friend Nikki and her family were here last week for her husband’s 20 yr college reunion. They are some of our closest friends from our time at Bolling AFB, and we’ve been missing them this whole year. It’s funny how once we got a bigger house, all our friends are showing up for a visit. We love it!
(Well, not all our friends have visited. I’m looking at YOU, JennG!)
Anyway…Nikki brought us a whole bunch of apples from their apple trees, plus some canned applesauce and what they call “plumbleberry jam.” It’s like she knew how much my children love homemade applesauce!
Looking at all those apples I thought about making a pie. Or more applesauce. Or maybe…apple butter! I’ve never made apple butter, so I thought I’d give it a try.
Look at all these beautiful apples, all washed and ready to go!
I started by making unsweetened applesauce. I used our family’s go-to recipe, minus the sugar (recipe to follow in a different post).
The next day I used the crock-pot all day to cook down the applesauce into apple butter. My house smelled divine! I consulted a couple of different recipes for the ratio of spices and varying cooking times, but they all pretty much came down to applesauce, spices, and slow cooking all day in various stages of covered or uncovered.
In the end, it didn’t really look like butter in consistency, more like jam or jelly. But mmmmm! does it taste wonderful! I’ve been slathering it on toast and biscuits and I’m hoping to heat it up and pour it over vanilla ice cream.
