So, I’ve never canned anything before. That is, before yesterday!
By the way, we did have a great day at the pumpkin patch and I’ll share pictures of that soon. However, we also went apple picking :: which was a first for us and good fun too.
Jonagold apples are in season and although, they’re no Honeycrisp (my favorite!), they are deliciously juicy especially straight off the tree!
Off we went to the Taves Family Farm in the valley to pick some deliciousness.
Some of us aimed high
managing to get the best ones right on top of the trees.
and some others ate nothing but apples the whole day!
oh, and some old-fashioned rock candy too 🙂
What do you do when you come home with all of these apples?
I went through my go-to recipe place, Tasty Kitchen and decided that the easiest thing would be to make a batch of apple butter. We love apple butter!
I used my apple slicer to core 5 lbs of apples in less than 10 minutes, easy peasy. Into the crockpot went all the ingredients. Our house smelled so much like fall yesterday with the sweet aroma of apples cooking and cinnamon, oh my!
I drastically reduced the quantity of sugar that the recipe calls for, using just a tad under 2 cups and I’m glad I did because what resulted is a perfect balance of tart and sweet.
Another thing I would do differently the next time is not run the cooked pulp through the blender but rather use a sieve. Even though I whizzed it for barely 3 seconds, I lost the grainy texture. Thankfully, the taste wasn’t altered in any way and my toast is thrilled 🙂
Yum, yum, yum! Apple Butter… it’s a good thing!
littleblackdogsa
Wow, lucky you. Love those apples, they look so yummy. 🙂
You could also preserve the pieces in the syrup, with cinnamon, and serve them hot in the winter months, with custard or ice-cream. Or cut thin slices and dry them in the sun, to store and eat later again.
tara
Amazing – a good thing indeed! A friend was telling me apple butter is perfect in hand pies too!
Leslie
I just bought some Jonagold’s today for some apple crisp. Now I just want to eat them. I love my apple peeler/corer. It makes things so easy. The apple picking trip looks fab. Wish we had that down here.
Angela
Love the Apple Barn! We canned apple sauce and apple butter with ours. I’ll have to try the apple butter in the crock pot next time as I always end up getting burned by splattering apple butter. I usually use my immersion blender and it works like a charm. Missed you at knit night.