Crock Pot Apple Butter

I hope you are enjoying this week's apple themed party! I had a blast preparing these posts and testing out the recipes. My favorite posts of the week have been my apple dumplings, and my easy apple tart. Just a couple posts left, and my today is my last recipe. I'm sad to see the apple theme end, but I'm sure I try more apples before the end of fall. Next week I'll be back to my regular posts with a cake tutorial, desert recipe, and a craft project! You won't want to miss these posts.

Back to "All About Apples," though. Today I am sharing a recipe for crock pot apple butter. My husband and I love apple butter, and we've been wanting to make some for a long time. I recently found a recipe for apple butter using the crock pot, I just had to try it out! Turns out that's how my husband's grandmother makes hers as well.

This recipe couldn't be simpler, and it was extremely tasty! We had to make some biscuits to start eating it on as soon as it was done!!

Crock Pot Apple Butter ingredients (makes 4-5 pints):

• 4 lbs cooking apples
• 2 cups cider
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cloves (optional)
• 1/8 tsp allspice

Crock Pot Apple Butter instructions:

• Peel, core, and cut up the apples
• Combine apples and cider in a large slow cooker

• Cover and cook on low for 10 hours
• Stir in sugar and spices, continue cooking for 1 hour

• Blend in a mixer 

• Freeze or pour into hot, sterilized jars and seal

I also learned something new. I needed to start the butter before leaving for work, so I decided to peel, core, and cut up the apples the night before. I am definitely not a morning person, so that seemed like a lot of work in addition to my morning routine and already getting to work early. We read that you could soak the apples for 5 mins in salt water (1 qt water, 1/2 tsp salt) to help keep them from getting brown. We did 1 lb of apples at a time and then placed them in ziploc bags and refrigerated them. The apples really weren't brown the next morning, I was impressed!