Maple Crab Apple Butter
A rich preserve of crabapples and maple syrup delicately scented with cinnamon. Trying to not eat it out of the jar is an exercise in futility. Makes about 2 pints-you can increase or decrease the size as needed. Expect some variation depending on your apples and cooking vessels.
Servings: 32 servings
Calories: 165kcal
Cost: 10
Equipment
- large pot (50 qt capacity or large enough to hold your apples).
- Food mill or apple sauce maker
- Slow cooker, wide baking sheets or pans.
- Whisk
- Potato masher
- Canning jars (optional)
Ingredients
- 8 lbs mixed, wild sweet crab apples or ½ gallon of apple sauce, see note
- 1 cup maple syrup or brown sugar
- ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Instructions
Apple Sauce
- Wash the apples if needed. Cut larger apples into pieces so they're the same size as the crab apples.
- Put the apples into a pot with 4 cups of water and bring to a simmer. Cover, stirring occasionally, cooking the apples until tender and mashing until they're completely broken down, about 20 minutes, depending on the size of your pot.
- Make sure to stir down to the bottom and don't be afraid to add a few additional cups of water to prevent scorching.
- Pass the apple mixture through an apple sauce maker or food mill. You should have about 2 quarts.
Apple butter
- Combine the apple sauce, cinnamon, salt and maple syrup and pour into a long, shallow baking dish or combination of smaller pots.
- Bake the mixture for roughly 2-2.5 hours at 325 F, whisking every 30 minutes or so. Alternately you can cook it in a slow cooker on low heat, stirring occasionally for about 8-12 hours. You may need to remove the lid to get the water to evaporate and thicken.
- The apple butter is finished when you can see the bottom of the pan when a spoon is dragged through it and the mixture doesn't weep water. It should be reduced in volume by about half. When chilled, it should hold in place when held upside down, and a spoon should stand straight up in it.
Canning
- Transfer the apple butter to canning jars. Put the jars in a water bath, bring to pot to a rolling boil. When the pot comes to a boil, set a timer for ten minutes.
- After ten minutes, remove the jars and allow to cool, then label, date, and store in a pantry.
Video
Notes
Chef's Notes
- Small, red crab apples are usually very tart. Larger apples can be tart, sweet, or mild flavored. I recommend using 3 parts sweet apples to tart crabapples as a starting point if you want to cook with them.
- 1 gallon of prepared apple sauce can be substituted for the raw apples.
- 15-20 lbs of apples will give you about 1 gallon of finished apple sauce.
- Some recipes will add lemon juice at the end before canning, this is unnecessary, the maple syrup and apples cooked down for so long are very stable.
- You can also add a splash of wild vanilla extract to this as it cooks.
Nutrition
Serving: 2oz | Calories: 165kcal | Carbohydrates: 43g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 0.4g | Saturated Fat: 0.1g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 0.01g | Sodium: 40mg | Potassium: 273mg | Fiber: 5g | Sugar: 34g | Vitamin A: 115IU | Vitamin C: 10mg | Calcium: 35mg | Iron: 0.3mg