Sugar Free, Crock Pot Apple Butter

A little disclaimer here.  I am not an apple butter expert.  I have probably only eaten it once or twice in my life.  But, I bought 12 kilos (26 pounds!) of apples by accident the other day.  Yeah, it was on line and I thought I was buying 12 apples ... SURPRISE!!!  12 kilos is a LOT of apples!!

So ... I've made crock pot apple sauce.  Apple strudel muffins (recipe coming).  Apple crumble.  And now apple butter.   I'm in love with the apple butter.  You'll have to try it though and tell me if it can be called apple butter or if we should just call it "spiced apple thick sauce."

I peeled the apples for this apple butter but I've since read that you can do it without peeling them.  I'm going to make some more and try that, because not peeling them would make this way less time consuming!  Not that it's super time consuming, but you know .... WAY LESS! 

Here's a little video about a little gadget that helps make things a lot easier too ...

Ok ... so, this was super simple. I filled my crock pot with peeled chopped apples. I used 2 kilos of granny smiths and 1 kilo of royal gala. Next time I will probably do two kilos of the sweeter apple ... On top of the apples I sprinkled 1 tsp of ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp of the following: ground ginger, ground allspice, ground cloves and ground nutmeg. I then poured about 1/4 cup of water over the top and then gave it a stir. I put the crock pot on low and let it go for about 14 hours.

When I came back, the apples were totally cooked.  I just stirred them with a spoon and they broke down.  I got out the stick blender and blended it right in the pot.  I left it cook on low for another hour or so but I'm not sure that was even necessary.

And that's it. 

I hear you can eat this stuff on toast.  So far, I've just been eating it straight out of the jar with a spoon ...

AFTER NOTE :: I made this again and didn't peel that apples.  Did it make a difference? The only notable difference was that I didn't have to peel the apples!  This easy recipe just got a bit easier!!  There was no change to taste and as I understand it, it's desirable to leave the skin on as it contains a lot of great nutrients.

ALSO :: when I originally posted this I said to use 1/2 tsp of all the spices (other than cinnamon) but then last night when I was putting the spices in the crockpot, I realized that it was actually only 1/4 tsp.  I imagine it's probably a bit to taste and it wouldn't really matter if you put in 1/2 tsp but I've changed it in the post to 1/4 tsp because that's the way I do it ...