Years ago I got a cookbook from the book of he month club that had a recipe for baked apple butter. It was a recipe written in a narrative style. Mom was having a yard sale and Callahans had a crabapple tree that was dropping apples and attracting bees. During the sale, I gathered up a couple of boxes of crabapples and make the butter using the crabapples. It was a taste and texture unlike I had ever experienced before. Even though it was a long, drawn out process, the results were worth it. Soon after, I ran into a farmer in the parking lot of the Salvation Army on River Drive. I bought some Jonathan apples. I didn't have enough apples to make apple butter so I bought some pears and did a roughly 50/50 split. The resulting apple-pear butter had a nectar-like flavor similar to the crabapple butter.
I was in Geneseo a few days ago and a farmer at their farmers market was selling apples at $1.00 a bag. I was inspired to make the butter once again. I can't find the cookbook so I went online but couldn't find a suitable recipe or methodolgy. Finally, I grabbed the Joy of Cooking and found a recipe similar in methodology.
In short, I made up the recipe. I expect it to be quite different from my original batches 20 years ago because I don't have a whole day to watch it bake so I got up at 2 in the morning. (I couldn't sleep because I was worried about when I would have time to bake this now that it was spiced and ready to go).At 2, I put it in 2 crock pots. I got it to the boiling point, then took the lids off about 6:00 am. It is going slow. I will be back home about 3:00 this afternoon and, if I don't see significant progress, I will put it in the oven and bake at 300 till done; hopefully being able to can it at about 8:00 PM.
I sure hope I didn't sell that cook book!
