Crockpot Apple Butter

With our abundance of apples we made apple butter in the crockpot-- super easy!
I think my crockpot is a 4 qt.


Crockpot Apple Butter
Cored, peeled and cut apples to fill crockpot
Add:
2-3 c. sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves

Cook on low for 12-16 hours.
I just put mine in jars, put seal lids on, tipped them upside down for 5 minutes and then turned them rightside up again. I have some really good sealing jars though, if I were using a typicall canning jar, lid and rings I would give them a 10 minute "water bath".

This did come out quite sweet with 2 1/2 c. sugar, so next batch I am going to cut that down some more.
I have an apple corer, peeler, slicer similar to this one. The first time I did it I left the apples pretty much the way they came off the peeler, corer, slicer and it made about 2 pints, the 2nd time I did it I broke the apples into smaller pieces so I fit alot more in and just packed it down. I got about 4 or 5 pints.

With being in the crockpot for so long the apple butter does have a darker color, but it tastes just as good as traditional apple butter!


Our process:

Chokecherry Jelly

About a month ago Brian's mom called and said there were some chokecherries where she takes her dog walking. I was ready to head out the door right then- but she said they weren't ready yet. So, since I didn't remember what chokecherries looked like, I asked her to call me when they were ready.
A couple weeks later she did. It happened to be a weekend we were going to be out of town, so I ran out and picked a big bowl full that Thursday when she called. They were in clusters, so pretty easy to pick.


This picture was taken about a week later, when I went back to get more- unfortunately, it was already passed the season and these are a bit wrinkled and dry. So I guess you really have to grab them when they are ready!


I brought them home, filled the bowl with water and let all the leaves, bugs, dried berries to float to the top so I could skim them off.
Then I put the rinsed berries into a large pot and filled it with water so it covered the berries. I brought it to a boil and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. I set another bowl in the sink with a strainer over the top and poured the berries into it so all the juice went into the bowl. I let it sit for a while, dripping and stirred the berries a couple times.
I probably could have boiled them a second time to get more juice (from what I've read online, that's what our grandmothers did) but didn't think of it.
I measured out the juice to see how many batches of jelly I could make.
The chokecherries apparently have plenty of natural pectin.

I found this Ball pectin at Walmart for $1 cheaper than the Sure-Jell and they each had a $.50 coupon inside- so the next one was only $1./box. It was in the canning section, rather than the baking section where the Sure-Jell is.
It's a basic pectin- 4 c. fruit or juice, pectin and then whatever amount of sugar you want, up to 3 cups.
I think I used 8 c. juice, 6 c. sugar and one box of pectin.
I've used it with other juice now and cut down the sugar more, but chokecherries are pretty tart, so I used the maximum amount with them.

Cost-wise, this was great:
Juice: free
Pectin: $1.
Sugar: $1.
Yields 8 jars @ $.25/per jar (pint jar)

I got 4 batches of jelly = 16 pints of jelly.

Do you make jam/jelly?