As promised, the apple butter recipe!

First, you’ll need to go punkin huntin and stop at a local produce stand on the way home. Preferably in the rain, but do what you can. If you can’t stop at a local produce stand while it’s raining I suggest having your local supermarket deliver apples. Barring that, put down your knitting and get yourself to the market all by yourself. You need enough green and red apples to fill your crock-pot once they are cored and quartered – not peeled. I have a regular sized crock-pot and it took five large green apples, two enormous - like the size of your head - macintosh apples, and two wee fuji apples from our tree in the backyard. To the apples add two cups of apple cider. Not apple juice, but apple cider. Sort of tart? Slightly spicy? That’s the stuff. Now cook. For about two hours.

Once you’ve cooked the apples until they’re mushy and gushy, pull out the food processor or blender. Now, I waited until the apples cooled over night for this step. I hate dealing with hot liquids in the food processor. You should too. Such a mess. Such and opportunity to burn oneself. So the next morning put all the apply smush into the food processor and process the living heck out of it. We’re looking for almost liquid here, folks.

When you’ve achieved liquid take the top off the food processor and, oh wait. The top doesn’t actually come off this food processor. It warped in the dishwasher. Take a hammer to the top to see if you can remove the top of the food processor. If that doesn’t work you can always do what I did: pour the liquid through the ingredient shoot back into the crock-pot. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked! Um, you should try to measure how much apple smush you have. I had about six cups.

To the apple liquid, add the juice and grated rind of one medium lemon. Same with one orange. I know, you’re thinking how odd to add citrus to apple butter, but trust me it is amazingly subtle and just perfect. Now add a scant quarter of a cup of cinnamon. A generous two dashes of ground cloves. A generous dash of nutmeg. And the special ingredient? A dash of Chinese five-spice powder. Mix it all up. Now taste.

Now, for every cup of apple liquid you are going to add a half a cup of firmly packed dark brown sugar. I’ll caution you though, I would taste before adding the last cup or so. You don’t want to eat just brown sugar on your hot French bread. Once you’ve sweetened to taste, set that sucker on high and walk away. Come back every hour or so and stir and taste. After six to eight hours you should have a thick, dark paste. It thickens and forms a beautiful shine as it cools. Now you can pour it into jars you sterilized and boil the bejesus out of once you put on the lid. Or you can pour it into freezer containers, but leave some space. Don’t ask, just heed my advice – half an inch minimum. Lastly, you can put it in Tupperware in the refrigerator and eat it up in a few weeks. As it is incredibly yummy, you’ll find yourself eating it with a spoon when no one is looking and shocked when you get to the end of the first week and there is no more apple butter! Enjoy!