Apple Butter - Quick Cooking

     I love Apple Butter but it can be pretty expensive.  In fact it can be so pricey that when I buy a jar off the shelf I find myself trying to ration it out to make it last longer.  This super easy apple butter recipe is a great economic alternative that can be whipped up in about an hour.  Or, if you wanted to, you could actually load all of the ingredients into a slow cooker and leave it overnight if you don’t want to watch it.  When I do my fresh apple version I love to cook it that way.

     This recipe, on the other hand starts out with unsweetened applesauce so most of the wrok is already done.  And the fact that this is such an easy recipe also made this a perfect choice to try out in my Cast Iron Apple Butter Experiment. 
     Now I’ve been taught by my mother and grandmother that you should NEVER make apple butter or anything else acidic in cast iron cookware or it will taste like metal.  Most of the online research I’ve done seems to suggest that my mom is right.  But in some of the research I’ve done, other people say they only use a cast iron vessel to make their apple butter.  Since cooking things in cast iron adds iron content to whatever you’re cooking and I’m a little iron deficient, I thought I try my quick cooking apple butter in a cast iron skillet to see how it might work out.    

 

Apple Butter

Prep time: 5 min

Cook time: 1 hour

 

Ingredients

• 54 oz apple sauce unsweetened
• 2/3 cup molasses
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp nutmeg 
• ¼ tsp ground cloves
• ¼ tsp ginger
• 1 cup of water (to rinse the apple sauce from the jars)
• sugar (to suit your tastes, I added ¾ cup)

 

Video Tutorial:

 

 

 

Instructions

1. Empty to applesauce into a stainless steel pot then rinse the jars with about ½ cup of water per jar and pour it into the pot with the applesauce.
2. Cook the applesauce over a low heat stirring occasionally for about 45 minutes or until the applesauce has reduced and thickened to a consistency that resembles apple butter. 
3. Add all of the spices and molasses to the pan and stir until the ingredients are well combined. Taste the apple butter to determine how much sweeter you might like it and add sugar in ¼ cup increments until it has a sweetness that you’re happy with then simmer for an additional 10 minutes. 
4. To store the apple butter, I like to wash the apple sauce jars then when the apple butter is cool enough, spoon it into the jars.  I also like to make some labels that include the date when the batch was made so that there’s no confusion.