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JuliKellner
Juli Kellner
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If you have an abundance of apples, try making tasty, cinnamon-spiced apple butter.My friend bought a big white farmhouse on the outskirts of Duluth. She fell in love with the old-fashioned kitchen cabinets, the 1920s floor plan and the three ample bedrooms upstairs. It also came with a garage and a field.
The apple tree was a surprise.
“I moved into the house in February,” says Miranda. “There was a row of trees that separated my field from the neighbors, but no one mentioned that there were fruit trees.”
Miranda, a technical writer, works largely from home. In spring, the tree blossomed under her office window. “The flowers were nice; big and showy and white. I thought it was probably one of those old ornamental crab-apple trees.” Yeah. No.
Miranda appeared at my door with grocery bags of apples in mid-September. “I picked six of these yesterday, and there has to be twice as much still in the tree.”
We sipped white wine and pondered apple recipes. Every fall my kids and I trek to Bayfield, Wisconsin, to pick a bushel of apples. Miranda had a lot more than a bushel.
“We should make apple butter,” I suggested. I’d never made apple butter, but bet the fragrant cinnamon-spiced butter needed a lot of apples.
She was skeptical. “I don’t remember your mom making apple butter. Your mom made zucchini butter. Do you know how to make apple butter?”
I shrugged. “How hard can it be?”
Miranda had heard me utter that phrase … as she helped me push a red 1965 Chevy Impala out of a rural ditch. We held off on the apple butter.
One week later, Miranda wasn’t even coming in to chat. She just left bags of apples on my porch. A week after that, she opted for apple butter.
Now for any large-scale apple project, I strongly recommend those wonderful hand-crank, apple-peeling and coring gadgets that attach to a counter or table. Place an apple in the vise, turn the crank and watch as the apple is cored, peeled and sliced into a cute even corkscrew. Kids love it. You’ll love the help.
We took the cored, peeled and chopped apples and, following the plain recipe below, created really delicious apple butter. Then we canned what felt like a satisfying number of half pints.
The recipe calls for pints, but Miranda preferred smaller jars. We repeated the process a couple of times, or was it a couple of hundred? Frankly I hardly remember. By fall’s end, forget the small jars – we were canning quarts of apple butter and Miranda was shipping it as gifts to her clients. Turns out Miranda’s new property actually had two more apple trees.
Then we found the currant bushes. “Next summer we should make currant jelly,” I told Miranda. “How hard can it be?”
Sharon's Chunky Apple Butter
5 lbs. apples, quartered, cored & peeled (Cortland or Wealthy)
2 c. apple cider
3 c. granulated sugar
1 c. brown sugar
4 tsp cinnamon
1-1/2 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. allspice
A dash of nutmeg
Place the apples and all ingredients into a large Dutch-oven style saucepan. Cook until the apples are soft, but retain their shape a bit. Mash slightly with a potato masher. Cool and refrigerate or process in pint jars. This can also be frozen. Tastes great on cinnamon raisin toast.
Thanks to Sharon Locey of the Thimbleberry Inn Bed & Breakfast, from A Bayfield Apple Feast Cookbook – WDSE Cooks!
Apple Butter
5 lbs. apples peeled, cored & cut (Cortland or Macintosh)
8 c. sugar
1-1/2 c. water
1 c. apple cider vinegar
2 T. cinnamon
Preheat oven to 300° F. Mix cinnamon, sugar, vinegar and water in saucepan. Heat on low until dissolved. Pour mixture over the apples laid in a 4-quart pan and place covered in the oven. After 1 hour, remove the cover and continue baking, stirring often, until you reach the “right” consistency. The apple butter should be brick red. Pack in sterile jars and seal. Three cups of cut apples equals about 1 pound. Makes 7 pints. Add flavors to be creative. Try rum, caramel or raspberry juice to taste. A batch is easily tripled and cooks up nicely in a turkey roaster.
Thanks to Beta Bodin of Sweet Sailing from A Bayfield Apple Feast Cookbook – WDSE Cooks!