Apple Butter!

My cousin and I introduced my baby sister to Cracker Barrel (a foreign restaurant, which can be found in the United States) a couple weeks ago.  We enjoyed the Apple Butter so much that I bought some and imported it home to Canada.  Never one to settle for enjoying what someone else made, I set out to make some that tasted as scrumptious as the Cracker Barrel Apple Butter.

My desire to make apple butter directly coincided with the weekend that we chose to take our kids apple picking.  We convinced the grandparents to join us and we all had a blast picking a bushel of apples and eating a few more.  We chose Mutsu and Golden Delicious since they only had three kinds of apples left and we didn't need more Macs.

 Once we got the apples home I cut and cored a bunch of them (maybe 10), then threw them into the crock pot with about 1/2 cup of apple juice.  (The juice was to let them get a good start on cooking and not burning.)  I left them in there for a couple hours...

 I stirred them a bit and let them cook a couple more hours...

 After a little more stirring and cooking, they were ready to process.

 I pushed the apples through a metal sieve to get the skins out of the mix.

 And I was left with a nice smooth apple puree, minus the puree part.  I had initially wanted to do a sugar-free apple butter, but since Golden Delicious are a little tart, I decided about 1/3 cup of brown sugar was in order.

 I added some cloves and a cinnamon stick and let it cook for another 6 hours or so and then I got this beautiful, dark apple buttery goodness...

The kids came home from school and sampled the apple butter...

 It's a hit!  The kids loved it and I've now got a few jars of it waiting to go into my pantry.  I can check another first off my list - I've made apple butter!