Why You’ll Love This
This apple butter recipe is so easy to make in a slow cooker you will never buy it from the store again. It’s less expensive, and you control the ingredients in homemade apple butter. This crockpot apple butter is heavenly, spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. Your home will smell amazing while this is cooking. Kick up that morning toast by slathering this apple butter on a warm piece of sourdough toast or regular white toast. With the spread, you can also make this moist and delicious apple butter bread.
What You’ll Need
Fresh apples – We use a mix of Gala and Granny Smith apples. Varieties of apples such as Honeycrisp, Fuji, Pink Lady, Cortland, and McIntosh all will work.Granulated sugar and dark brown sugar – You can also use light brown sugar, but I like the added depth of the molasses flavor.Ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, ground cloves, ground allspice, vanilla extract, and salt – These combined seasonings make the apple butter sing with flavor!
How to Make Slow Cooker Apple Butter (spiced & dark)
Peel, core, and slice 6 1/2 pounds of apples. (I used an equal mix of gala and granny smith apples) Do yourself a favor and get one of these apple slicers to save a lot of time! This recipe will make a small batch, about 3 pints. Place the apples in the slow cooker. In a medium bowl, combine the granulated sugar, dark brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg cloves, and salt. Or throw it on top of the apples and stir. Cover and cook on low for 10 hours. Remove the lid and continue to cook for another 2 hours until your desired thickness and color. Add the vanilla, use an immersion blender to blend until smooth, and place in containers. You can also use a regular blender or food processor, but I suggest doing it in batches. This year I decided to water bath the jars. I have frozen it in mason jars in previous years, and that works just fine. Either way, it’s your choice. Apple butter canned in sterile jars will last almost indefinitely. See simplycanning for canning in a water bath. This also worked perfectly! I was proud of my first canning project (patting myself on the back). I have an 8qt pressure cooker that I used for this project. I didn’t pressure can them I just used the pot for the large capacity. You don’t want your jars to touch during the process. Share this homemade apple butter with friends and family!
Tips
You can water bath can or freeze the apple butter for longer storage.When using the immersion blender, you get to control how smooth or chunky you want it to be. You don’t have to make it completely smooth; that’s just how we like our apple butter.Don’t have an immersion blender? Use a blender and do it in batches.
Variations
Instead of our spice mix, try using apple pie spice or even pumpkin pie spice.
More Delicious Apple Recipes
Adapted from mybakingaddiction
