Apple Butter Bonanza

So it's a long weekend and it's pissing rain...what a perfect weekend for some canning I say. Although I wouldn't normally say that since I've never canned before however I had the food network on in the background this morning and saw out of the corner of my eye on "Chuck's day off" that he was whipping up a batch of apple butter and I suddenly thought what a perfect rainy day project!

Unfortunately I did not actually catch how Chuck, if that is in fact his name was making the apple butter since I think I got distracted somewhere between a dog needing to go for a walk and a 1 year old boy spilling milk all over the place. But a quick google search came up with many recipes to choose from including basic how-to canning instructions for the canning illiterate.

So after comparing many online recipes and canning instructions I decided to base my apple butter on the recipe from Simply Recipes.

Apple butter makes a perfect spread for toast, grilled sandwiches or crackers. Or even better give as a gift next time you visit a relative or friend.

Apple Butter
adapted slightly from SimplyRecipes
(makes about 4 jars)

4 lbs of granny Smith Apples
2 cups sugar
2-3 cups apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground allspice
grated rind and juice of 1 lemon

1. Cut apples into quarters and place in pot with water and vinegar.

2. Boil for about 20 minutes or until soft.

3. Remove apples from vinegar/water solution and puree in a blender or food processor.

4. At this point I strained the puree to get ride of the remaining seeds and skin from the apples.

5. Place puree back in a pot and add spices, lemon juice and lemon rind. Boil, stirring frequently for 1-2 hours or until dark in colour.

Now the Canning begins!!

Proper canning instructions can be found here but basically what I did was place 4 jars without their lids in a 420 degree F oven for 20 minutes and I washed the lids with soapy water.

Next I placed the apple butter into the jars straight from the oven and I screwed the lids on tight.

Then I placed the 4 jars into a big pot of boiling water which was deep enough to cover the lids for about 10 minutes.

According to online resources I checked the lids were now sealed. And the lids were not "popping" and so I assumed they were officially canned properly.