Slow Cooker Apple Butter—No Sugar Added

If I wasn’t such a lady, I’d have eaten all 32 ounces of this apple butter by myself.  Who says apple butter has to be for spreading on bread?  I don’t eat bread anyway, or at least I don’t have any gluten free bread right now.  I’m sure it’s delicious on bread, but try not to just spoon too much of it in your mouth straight from the pot.

This couldn’t be any easier to make, the hardest part (though it’s so worth it) is waiting for it to cook in the slow cooker.  That is the main reason most of its cooking time was overnight and while I was gone to my  doctor’s appointment this morning.  Perfection when I returned! And sure smells great!  I’ve made an apple butter before, but also used some pears since I didn’t have enough apples.  So this one is pure apple butter, with no sugar.  It does not need sugar!  Chop the apples—I used my Vidalia Chop Wizard (As Seen On TV, but available in many stores now and only about $20).  Love this thing.  It has two different sizes for chopping.  I chopped these with the smaller one.  Added a little lemon juice, some yummy spices and a little apple juice and let it cook away.

Slow Cooker Easy Apple Butter, No Sugar Added, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

12 apples, your choice, but something like Gala, Braeden, red or yellow delicious, or Fuji, or any combination (if you use Granny Smith apples, you might need sugar), peeled, core removed and chopped

juice of 1 lemon

1  1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1  1/2 cups 100% apple juice

Put all the ingredients into the bowl of a slow cooker, stir together until combined.  Cook on low 12 hours, perfect for overnight.  After about 10 hours (in the morning), blend the apples until smooth (I used a handheld blender right in the slow cooker, but you can carefully transfer the apples to a blender, in batches, too.).  If you don’t blend it too much, you can just call it applesauce, but keep blending until is a super-smooth consistency and it becomes a nice apple butter.  Once blended, you can let it cook another couple hours, but you don’t have to.   Let cool, store in jars in the refrigerator for up to a couple weeks.  Makes 32 ounces (4 half pints, perfect gift giving homemade item).

Applesauce-y

Almost there, blend a little longer.  It will become silky smooth.

Apple Butter, no sugar added

You will want to dive right in.  I’m planning for some of this to go in these Apple Betty Bars I’m going to make this weekend for a family get together.  But I’m also thinking this would sure make some delicious dairy free apple ice cream, maybe even with caramel (vegan, refined sugar free) swirled in, and some pecans.  Okay, yum!  Deal.  Working on it. 

*Note, the strange discrepancy in colors in the photos is because it’s quite a rainy day here today!  It does look most like the first and last photo here on this post. ; )

Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies—Apple Betty Bars

Can I just say—whoa, the weeks just fly by being involved with TWD, FFWD and TWCC!  Having fun though and that’s what matters, right?

When I thought about what cookie I wanted to share next, I also kept thinking about the Sugar Free Spiced Apple/Pear Butter I’d made recently and that made me think about some really good crumb bars I’d had back in Kansas at another one of the classes I’d taken from Chef Paige.  The bars Paige made for the class were blueberry, but she mentioned that you can really use any jam or fruit you’d like in the bars, so I decided to go with the seasonally perfect apples.  I made these bars once back in May and used apricot preserves on half and some store bought apple butter on the other half.  I was using up things we had in the fridge to get ready for our move to Utah.  Both bars were good then.  Paige’s blueberry bars were delicious.  I almost made the blueberry ones, but ultimately decided on apple.  I have a freezer full of blueberries I froze this summer, so I’ll make those next.

What I really love about these bars is how sturdy they are.  You turn the bars out of the pan and they come out perfectly every time.  (Butter will do that for a cookie! ;)  I didn’t even chill the bars, just cooled at room temperature for a couple hours.  They slice perfectly and you can decide what size you want the bars.  The recipe suggests using quick oats, but I was out and used old-fashioned oats with great success.

Stack up the bars.  No problem there.

These taste great as they have the spiced apple butter as well as some chunks of apple.  Any fruit/jam/filling you use and these cookies are great for Christmas trays, exchanges, or any entertaining.  You could also add walnuts or pecans to the cookie base/topping if you’d like.  Thanks for the great recipe, Paige!  If you want true cooking expertise along with great recipes shared by a real genuine person, check out Paige’s blog, A Cooking Life.

Apple Betty Bars, adapted by Katrina, Baking and Boys! from Chef Paige Vandegrift’s Blueberry Betty Bars

Cookie Base and Crumble Topping:

2 cups all purpose flour (8 ounces)

1 ½ cups quick oats (4.5 ounces)

½ cup granulated sugar (3.5 ounces)

½ cup light brown sugar (3.5 ounces)

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup melted butter (1/2 lb.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Add the melted butter and stir until well combined and crumbly. Set half of the crumb mixture (about 14 ounces each) aside and press the other half into the bottom of a quarter sheet pan or a 13x9 inch baking pan. Bake until puffed and golden—10 to 15 minutes. Set aside.

Apple Filling:

3 Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored and chopped to ½ inch dice

1 cup spiced apple butter (I used homemade) (9 ½ ounces)

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Combine the apples and lemon juice in a large bowl. Add the apple butter and stir together.  Cook in a saucepan over medium heat until apples are tender, 10-15 minutes.  (I used a glass bowl in the microwave cooking in 2 minute intervals and stirring until the apples were tender.)

Spread the apple filling over the baked crust. Scatter the remaining crumble over all. Bake until golden brown—25 to 35 minutes. Let the bars cool. Turn them out of the pan and then back onto a cutting board. Cut into bars. Place the bars on a double thickness of paper towels for a few minutes to absorb excess butter. To serve, sprinkle with powdered sugar, if desired.

***If you’d like to make the bars with the blueberry filling, here’s Paige’s recipe for the filling:

6 ounces mixed berries, fresh or frozen

6 ounces blueberries, fresh or frozen

4 ounces sugar

juice of half a lemon

Place berries in a medium saucepan along with the sugar and lemon juice.  Bring to a simmer.  Cook until thickened—you will have 1  1/4 cups of thick berry sauce. 

Want more cookies?  Check out the links to all the other Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies bakers below.

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And now—Tuesdays With Dorie for this week. Lynne from Honey Muffin chose Double Apple Bundt Cake (pages 184-185) and you can get this great recipe on her blog. The cake has apple butter in it as well as some grated apples.

I made homemade spiced apple/pear butter! Oh my gosh, it’s so good. A few weeks ago, I made some peach butter and thought that was really good, but in a taste test, I like the apple butter even more. I never realized how easy it is to make! When I decided on Saturday to make the cake and realized I didn’t have any apple butter, I decided to just make some, even though the only apples we had at the time were a few Red Delicious and a couple past-their-prime little Gala apples. I found this super easy recipe on Squidoo.com. I only made half the recipe, which meant I needed 2 1/2 pounds of apples.

I chopped and measured as I went and after cutting up the four sad, little Galas and three Red Delicous apples, I was still short a little, so I cut up two Asian pears I had and threw them in with the apples. This could not have been more simple. Into the crockpot the diced apples and pears went along with some cinnamon and freshly grated nutmeg. A little apple juice went in as well and the crockpot was set on low. I went to bed and the apples stewed all night. The recipe suggests not adding sugar until the apple butter is finished (or close to it) so you can test it’s sweetness. Well, after blending the apples in a blender and tasting it, I thought it was sweet enough and didn’t add any sugar. So this is also sugar free apple butter.

Easy, Sugar Free Spiced Apple Pear Butter, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from Squidoo.com

3 red delicious apples, peeled, cored and chopped

4 small Gala apples, peeled, cored and chopped

2 Asian pears, peeled, cored and chopped

(2 1/2 pounds of any apples/pears you’d like)

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

3/4 cup apple juice

Combine all ingredients in a crockpot and cook on low for 10-12 hours with the lid vented slightly. Blend until smooth. Taste and add sugar, agave, or sweetener of your choice if desired. Mine didn’t need anything. If you use Granny Smith apples or another more tart apple, you will probably need some sugar.

You can also cook the smooth apple butter to the consistency/thickness you desire by leaving it in the crockpot a few more hours after it’s blended without the lid on, which helps remove more of the moisture.

I made the bundt cake and followed the directions exactly. I love when a bundt cake comes right out of the pan! I omitted the raisins and used walnuts. Interesting fact—kitchen scales are better for measuring ingredients. Example—one cup of walnuts. I normally just put them in a measuring cup to the top of the cup. This time I threw the cup on the scale just for fun and looked on the bag of walnuts to see that 120 grams equals one cup.

The cup was overflowing with nuts before it reached 120 grams. I went with the scale measurement. I prefer weighing ingredients in recipes. Just sayin’.

I called the cake done at 46 minutes. I gave it a light glaze made with about 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar and 3 good tablespoons of apple butter whisked together until smooth.

I served it with a little of the apple butter on the side (Dorie said. ;) and some chopped walnuts and homemade Concord raisins. (I left the raisins out of the cake because I knew the boys wouldn’t like them, but I would have liked them.)

The boys each ate a piece. We called Cindy and asked if she wanted some cake. She came over at 9:30 Sunday night after she got off work and took home half the cake. Yay for sharing! She also got to take home six cream puffs that I made.

Come back for the post to see if the cream puffs worked out better for me than the first week of French Fridays With Dorie last week when we made gougeres (cheese puffs) and mine had a few issues. Thanks for stopping by and be sure to tell me what you’d want to spend $75 on at CSN Stores if you want to be entered to win!