It's Butter Time..

Yep indeedy.
Butter Time!
Not 'butter' butter, but apple butter!
Truth be told, it is my second run for the year so far,
but nowhere near my last!
I do truly love apple butter.
I usually try to do it on the woodstove
since it is hot and chugging already, but it is just too warm to have a fire today.
So, the stovetop it is.

I know these are some ugly apples,but they are unsprayed and pure and delicious.

Ugly is only skin deep.

And this little jewel is not an ancient torture device,

but the hero of the day.

I can knock out a 15 quart Dutch Oven of apples in a flash!!

I have done it all by hand in the past and it is agony.

Never again..hahaha ha.

The apples look much, much better now, don't they?

And, oh! I wish ya'll could smell my house.

Sweet and tart. Man, it smells great in here.

I do not make 'black butter', which is apple butter cooked for so long

that it turns black. For me I like to be able to taste the actual apples in the final product.

Don't get me wrong. Black butter is good, just intense and not very apple-y.

I stop when my butter is a deep, rich amber and not too smooth.

My recipe is as follows:

Apples.

Some folks add a few cups of sugar, some cinnamon and nutmeg and other spices.

Not me. I find that apples are plenty sweet enough just the way Mother Nature made them.I may get crazy sometimes and add a splash of lemon juice if I find that it is getting too sweet and I may add just a whisper of cinnamon... maybe. I am talking less than half a teaspoon for a whole run and a whole run is several quarts of finished product.

I think that most of this run will end up as gifts this year.

Except for my mother.. she's getting cherry butter. Oh yeah. I said it.... cherry butter!!

You just don't know how good life is until you have smeared a fresh hot biscuit with cherry butter.

Of course, apple butter is no slouch on a biscuit either.

Or on hot cornbread.

How bad do you want some apple butter right now?