Apple Butter

Apple Butter:

• 10 apples (~5lbs)
• ¼ cup sugar
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Chop apples. You can decide if you want to peel them or not (I did half and half), either way is fine! I used a mix of gala and fuji apples.
2. Add all ingredients to a pot, stir, and cover. Cook over medium heat for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally. Apples will be very soft and shrink down a lot.
3. Using an immersion blender, or carefully scooping mixture into a regular blender, puree the apples.
4. At this point, you can either stop cooking and use apple butter as is, or continue to cook, partially covered for another 10-30 minutes, to thicken the apple butter a bit more. Stir frequently if you do this. I cooked mine for about 15 minutes after blending.
5. Store apple butter in airtight containers in the fridge.
6. Yield: 16 oz (2 cups) of apple butter

I could spend a long time writing about this apple butter. Telling you that it smells better than any candle you could find at Home Goods, or how it’s so easy to make, or how it is the perfect treat to give to friends this fall. But I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t *almost* as excited to tell you about these tiny jars that I packed it in.

Back in March, I bought 72 of these little guys, to use at a baby shower I was planning for April.

And then, well…..you know. That didn’t happen.

I wouldn’t have guessed in March that I would find myself in September, with about 67 tiny jars left (I’ve found a few projects here and there for them), and the suggestion to make apple butter! I was SO pumped to have a good use for these, and had visions in my mind of homemade apple butter, stored in jars, as far as the eye could see.

But let me tell you! Apples really reduce down in size when you cook them! My pot full of apples ended up filling four of my 4oz jars (and btw, I could finish one jar, on my own, with a spoon, like it was baby food).

This recipe was so delicious and simple to make, I’m already planning round two- with at least a quadruple batch…to maybe last me a week or two 😉

What else should I make to put in the five dozen jars I have left?!