Thursday, October 29, 2009

Amy's Apple Butter

15 apples, peeled, cored, cut into small pieces **
3 cups of sugar
2 Tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 tsp salt

**You can use any type of sweet apple for this. I've used Gala, Jonagold and Red Delicious in the past and they all turned out delicious.

How to make apple butter with a toddler:

Wash apples.


Peel and core apples. Wish you had bought an apple/peeler/corer/slicer from Pampered Chef. You were a consultant, for crying out loud!!! You DEFINITELY should have invested in this.


Find sippy cup. Fill with milk. Turn on cartoons and return to apples. Chop apples. LOTS of apples. Chop so many apples you begin to wish you had never gone to the apple butter festival and decided "Hey, that's not so hard. I can do that. I can make LOTS of apple butter." Wish you had never even seen an apple in your life. Continue chopping apples. Finish chopping apples and place in two crock pots.

Find missing puzzle piece. Watch little one work puzzle 3 times. Return to apples. Watch as toddler climbs up on bar stool so he can "help".


And help.


And help.




Still helping.

And helping himself to some apples.


Add orange juice, sugar, salt, cinnamon and cloves.




Clean up kitchen while sweet little apple-filled toddler plays cars under your feet.
Put toddler to bed and then put yourself to bed because it's been a LONG day!

During the night, cook down apples until thick and reduced by half.


In the morning, feed toddler breakfast. While he's busy in his highchair, blend apples and juice in several batches in your blender because you do not have a fancy schmancy immersion blender. Pray that Santa reads your blog and brings you an apple/peeler/corer/slicer and an immersion blender for Christmas so you never have to do this much work to make apple butter again.


Remove toddler from highchair. Wash his hands and then your hands and then help him find something to do. Return to kitchen. Ladle apple butter into hot, sterilized jars. (Thank goodness for the dishwasher w/the heated dry cycle!)


Process in hot water bath for 20 minutes.

During this, play cars, sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, read Goodnight Moon and change diaper. Remove jars from canner and allow to cool. Congratulations! You've just spent approximately $25 and the better part of two days making 7 pints of apple butter. Taste finished product and realize you must have only added 2 of the three cups of sugar. Scream. A lot. Decide if people love you they'll eat the danged apple butter and love it or at least pretty please do not tell you it needs more sugar. :)

3 comments:

Jen said...

Ohhhhh AMY!!!! How frustrating that must be to have done ALL that work and not LOVE the taste!! I am sooooo sorry!
On the flip side, I LOVED your commentary and all the pictures! What a gorgeous little guy you've got! LOVE LOVE LOVE those curls!

Ps. I have the apple peeler/corer/slicer from PC. I love it WHEN IT WORKS but if you have apples that are too big--won't work. If you have apples that are too soft--won't work. If you have apples that are odd shaped--won't work. For me, that means that it only works well about 25% of the time. One thing I can say though...my kids get super excited when they see me pull it out. They fight everytime about who gets to "do it". They love the thing!

Amy said...

The apple butter doesn't taste awful. I'm not too terribly disappointed because I can look at those jars sitting in my cabinet and say "I made that!" And I just found out my friend who is going on a mission trip to Haiti wants to take some with her. HOW COOL!!! My apple butter is going to Haiti! That's pretty awesome. I don't know why I didn't think to offer it to her myself but I'm so flattered she asked to take it with her.
And thanks for the info about the PC apple peeler. I am still considering buying it but may become a consultant again just so I can get the discount. Plus, now I know a few more people who would be customers so I might have better luck. I'm still undecided about that. We'll see.

Katy said...

Mom has that apple thing and she loves it. She thinks its the best thing. Ask her some time. This story cracked me up from start to finish. Also as far as pampered chef goes, I say go for it!