A Little Peace, A Little Apple Butter

Just in the nick of time, I got a chance to make some apple butter.  I had scraped the last bits of it onto my toast last month and I was really missing it.

Apple butter was one of my mom's favorites and I was pleased as punch when she pronounced mine as good as her mother's apple butter.  My grandmother died shortly after my own parents married, so I only knew her through my mother stories about her.  It seemed to me that she was a tireless homemaker, skilled in all areas except sewing.  Her inability to whip up a dress from a feedsack made her more human to me.  Though I can quilt and knit, sewing patterns elude me and frustrate me to no end.

I have been working on this apple butter recipe for nearly twenty years.  It was the first thing I ever canned and I go a little crazy when I get the chance to make it.  I make so much that I don't have to make it yearly, so the recipe and the method gets a little foggy in my mind.

This year my oldest and youngest have developed a taste for apple butter so I had better make lots of it.  Luckily, this is a good year for my neighbor's tree.  Her yard is littered with apples and bees.  I have sorted through the grass under her trees twice now and you can barely tell.

 The apples one uses for apple butter aren't the same type of apples used for pie or crisp.  The apples I used were ones I found under the tree.  My criteria was this:

• more than half rotten went in the chuck bucket,
• less than half rotten went to the butter bucket, and
• dirty but whole went to the bucket for the neighbor's pie.

 I then spent a nice hour, watching the bird feeder, listening to Charles Frazier read Cold Mountain, trimming away soft spots on a five gallon bucket of apples.  His voice is wonderful and it's one of my best loved audio books.  Sissy Spacek's reading of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is another personal favorite.

My apple butter is baked down in the oven.  I don't know how my grandmother made it, but I do remember tales of the church ladies making it every fall in the church yard, over a fire.  They took turns stirring the pot and feeding the fire, just like the witches of Macbeth.

I like the way this recipe has evolved over my twenty years with it.  I have refined it to portions to accommodate any amount.

Apple Butter Recipe

Place 12 pounds apples, quartered, in a large stockpot with 2 quarts of water.  Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, and cook for one to two hours, until the apples are mushy.

First strain the apples in a mesh colander, and then use a food mill to extract the sauce.  The remaining skins and seeds can go to the chickens or the compost.

For every one cup of sauce, add:

½ cup sugar

¼ t. cinnamon

¼ t. fresh lemon zest

1/8 t. cloves

1/16 t. allspice

Bake in an ovenproof dish (or two) at 300 degrees, stirring occassionally, until the apple butter reaches the desired consistency.  When dolloped on a plate, the butter should retain its shape.

Don't get scared by the math here and I know that you don't have a 1/16 teaspoon measure.  If you have 14 cups of sauce, as I did with my first batch, add 14/16ths of a teaspoon of allspice to the sauce.

Remember that math?  14/16=7/8.  If you don't have an eighth measure, round up to a full teaspoon if you like allspice.  Round down to 3/4 of a teaspoon if you are not so fond of it.

Process the apple butter in sterilized jars with sealed 2 part caps in a water bath for 10 minutes.

And be glad I revised this recipe.  My initial one stated that the pot should have enough water to COVER the apples.  Well, try as I might, I couldn't cover them.  Apples float.  I turned on the heat, and walked away from the pot.  When I returned, I saw this!

Action shot: Note the apples beginning to cascade over the side of the pot!

Apple mess everywhere!  Man, it took a long time to clean up after that cooking experience.

Scour your own 'hood for an apple tree.  Our neighbor's tree was the last of a triplet planted in the 1970s by a former owner who worked at a nursery.  He was glad to see one still standing.

My neighbor, industrious as she is, will never get up all those apples on her own.  She kindly offers some to me and she is looking for other apple pickers to lighten her load.  If you know of a neighbor who needs help with their own apple crop, trade yard cleaning services (aka. apple picking up) in exchange for apples.  Leave a couple of jars of apple butter on their doorstep to seal the deal.