Harvest Crock-Pot Apple Butter

 

Hello again, savvy savers! If you’re anything like me, you’re all about avoiding leftover waste. I detest is finding mason jars in my fridge at the end of the week with food needing to be thrown away. To me, food waste is just a missed opportunity to help stretch out my food budget just a little bit further. 

With this in mind, and since it’s the last day of National Apple Week, I wanted to use up the organic apples I purchased last week and the leftover apples from my Crock Pot Apple Chai Cider recipe posted earlier this week to make a new Crock Pot Apple Butter recipe! 

What I love about this tasty apple butter is it a truly low and slow recipe, but well worth the wait. Also, depending on the sweetness of the apples used, the amount of sugar used in this recipe can be reduced or removed from the recipe, which is always a bonus in my book. Couple this with this coming month’s drop in apple pricing, due to the harvest season, making this recipe an awesome canning recipe or potential holiday gift idea (paired with homemade bread or muffins), too!

Now, as mentioned above, I made this into a no-waste recipe by adding substituting two cups of the apples called for in this recipe with the cooked apples from my Crock Pot Apple Chai Cider. I was also able to add the spice sachet from the same recipe, too! The rest of the oranges and cranberries used in my cider will be frozen and used for Stovetop potpourri later in the holiday season as well. No fuss, no muss, no wasting, friends! 

 

So, here is what the final product looks like post-cooking and emulsifying.

 

 

Lastly, here is what the apple butter looks like once it’s ready to be placed in my canner. 

While I know this recipe takes some time to make, but I encourage you all to give this a try this season as it’s ever so worth the effort. Consider this: the average cost of a pint jar of apple butter in my area is $4.98. My cost for making six pints of Crock Pot Apple Butter: $4.56, making this recipe 80% cheaper than retail. Again, so worth the time, energy, and cost-effectiveness of this recipe!

Now friends, if anyone has any tips, tricks, or suggestions for making Crock Pot Apple Butter, I’d love to hear about it below!