Daring Cooks: Apple Butter

The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

This month's challenge was Apple Butter in order for all of us to better understand food preservation. To be honest, I'm a little dissapointed because my apple butter didn't come out quite right. It was too chunky to really be called apple butter, but no matter how much I mashed those apples, I still couldn't get it to be like butter. And without an immersion blender, what's a girl to do? So what I have is a cross between apple butter and sauce and is quite tasty. I ate it this morning on a bagel with cream cheese!

The whole process of making apple butter is simple, but time consuming. Basically I peeled and cored 5 lbs of apples, cooked them with a cup of water for about n hour until they were falling apart, added some spices, mashed, and let it go! It ended up being about a 3 hour process, but I think it was worth it. Apple butter freezes very well so this is a great idea if you have an apple tree and need to use up the piles of apples in your backyard.

Sadly, I don't have any pictures of the finished product because my camera/phone died. However, I will be using the apple butter this week to make a tasty pork dish. So look forward to pictures then!

XOXO

Natalie