Spiced Apple Butter Recipe

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Looking to bottle up your favorite fall flavors to enjoy year round? This Spiced Apple Butter Recipe is simple but so scrumptious, sure to be a new family favorite!

Looking to bottle up your favorite fall flavors to enjoy year round? This Spiced Apple Butter Recipe is simple but so scrumptious, sure to be a new family favorite! #fall #fallrecipes #applebutter #spicedapplebutter 

Spiced Apple Butter

Can you feel it yet?

When it’s still warm outside but there is a slight crisp to the night air? When one, then two, then many leaves start changing their colors?

It’s that season. No, not autumn. Apple-picking season and Apple Butter season!

I’m thankful to be blessed to live in an area of the country that is overflowing with gorgeous apple tress. Whether I’m getting my apples from a friend who has excess from her own tree or doing U-pick with the family at a local farm, I always end up with SO many apples. Bushels, in fact. I’ve always made a lot of applesauce, but in the past few years, I began making this delicious spiced apple butter as well.

Ways to use apple butter

It’s nice to have a delicious jar of autumn flavors —  cinnamon, apple, cloves — on hand to enjoy year-round. Spread it on your toast or biscuits. Enjoy it on top of a nice bowl of cottage cheese or a stack of pancakes. You can even use it in place of applesauce to make applesauce pancakes or as a filling for homemade toaster strudels.

You can use this spiced apple butter in your baking too! Use it in your favorite quick bread recipes like zucchini bread or banana bread the same way you would substitute applesauce for oil. Not only will it add in that extra burst of fall flavor, but it will reduce your saturated fats and keep your bread moist and delicious!

–Looking for some great quick bread recipes? Here are 18 Absolutely Delightful Quick Sweet Bread Recipes you’ll love.

Spiced Apple Butter Recipe

What You Need:

  • 4 pounds of cooking apples, quartered, but NOT peeled or cored — Granny Smith or Fuji are good choices
  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 1 cup apple juice
  • 1 cup water
  • 4 cups sugar (adjust based on the sweetness of the apples you use)
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp all spice
  • 1/2 tsp grated cloves
  • grated rind and juice of 1/2 lemon

apple butter

How to make Spicy Apple Butter:

1. Place the quartered apples in a large pot on the stove with the water, vinegar, and apple juice. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer, simmer 20 minutes or until apples are soft. (NOTE: This step can be made in a slow-cooker)

2. Using a food mill, work the apple mixture through the mill and into a large bowl. Add sugar, spices, and lemon.

3. Cook, uncovered, in a wide shallow pan, stirring occasionally to make sure there is none of the mixture sticking to the bottom. Cook this way for 1-2 hours, until the mixture has thickened.

4. Can, freeze, or use immediately. Store opened jars in the refrigerator.

Want to print this Spiced Apple Butter Recipe? Grab it below:

Spiced Apple Butter Recipe

Ingredients

  • 4 pounds of cooking apples quartered, but NOT peeled or cored -- Granny Smith or Fuji are good choices
  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 1 cup apple juice
  • 1 cup water
  • 4 cups sugar adjust based on the sweetness of the apples you use
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp all spice
  • 1/2 tsp grated cloves
  • grated rind and juice of 1/2 lemon

Instructions

  1. Place the quartered apples in a large pot on the stove with the water, vinegar, and apple juice. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer, simmer 20 minutes or until apples are soft. (NOTE: This step can be made in a slow-cooker)
  2. Using a food mill, work the apple mixture through the mill and into a large bowl. Add sugar, spices, and lemon.
  3. Cook, uncovered, in a wide shallow pan, stirring occasionally to make sure there is none of the mixture sticking to the bottom. Cook this way for 1-2 hours, until the mixture has thickened.
  4. Can, freeze, or use immediately. Store the opened jars in the refrigerator.

Recipe Notes

To can Apple Butter, simply place in pints and half-pints leaving 1/2 inch headspace and process in a hot water bath for 5 minutes.

How to Can Apple Butter

Simply place in pints and half-pint jars leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean paper towel and top with a sterilized lid and rim and tighten until finger-tight. Fill your water bath canner with water and bring to a boil.

Process for the time and pressure indicated on the chart above according to your altitude. Click over to the USDA website for guidelines on a weighted pressure canner. Be sure to check your pressure canner’s instruction manual to follow proper procedures.

–For more information on how to see if your jars have properly sealed and what to do if they haven’t, check out this post on Testing Jar Seals And Reprocessing Jars (Safe Home Canning)

Please check with your local extension office for any changes on times/temps/high altitude.

apple butter

Need something else to can with your fresh apples? Try canning Apple Pie Filling or Sweet & Tasty Apple Pie Jam

Make sure you check out all the free Canning and Preserving Recipes we have on Little House Living! We recommend a Presto Pressure Canner and the book Putting Food By for all your canning projects!

Do you like to make your own apple butter? What are some apple butter variations you enjoy?

sarahbio

This Spiced Apple Butter Recipe was originally published on Little House Living in September 2013. It has been updated as of September 2019.

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18 Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing this! I am so excited to try this because my fiance and I just bought our first home and it came with an apple tree (cooking apples). Pinning!

  2. I tried the spiced apple butter. I love the taste. However, after I ran my apples through the food mill it was already thick. I added some apple juice and simmered it for 30 minutes. It was real thick then. After processing it looks like it the apple butter has air pockets in it. I ran my tool around the jar before setting the lid. Should these jars not be stored outside the frig or long term because of maybe trapped air in the jars?

    Thx,

    1. Air bubbles should be fine but if you are worried about it you can just store them in the fridge. A different way to get out the air in something like this for next time would be to tap the bottom of the jar on the countertop so the bubble surface, but no matter what you do there will probably always still be some bubbles because of the cooking/processing.

  3. We are making apple butter this weekend. When our kids were small we made it yearly, but now it’s been almost 5 years. Excited to get this batch made.

  4. I have a blender, but am wanting to try a food mill. I am amazed at how many choices there are for such an “old-fashioned” tool. I don’t want to spend a fortune and have no idea what type or brand is the most tried and true. Please give me some suggestions. Thanks so much!

  5. Thanks for the good suggestion. It’s still out of my budget for now, though. Is there anything somewhat durable in the $20-$30 range?

    I’m so proud of myself–I canned my very first foods last night! I’ve been freezing a lot for umpteen years, but had never canned before. I made Pear Butter and also canned tomatoes. Unfortunately, the only pot I have deep enough to hold jars with 2 inches of water above the jar tops will only allow me to use half-pints. Maybe I can work on saving toward a real canning pot. Thanks for the encouragement I needed to actually try my hand at this. This morning I see all the little jars of good food and it gives me a great feeling. I always worry that my freezer will go out or the power, and all my hard work would be ruined.

  6. You can do this with pears too. Any apple butter recipe will work with pears, just reduce the liquid a bit. I make pear butter every fall. Can’t wait until our apple trees are bearing fruit.

  7. I just got a recipe for zucchini pie it tastes just like apple pie it is amazing. I am going to try using zucchini to make “apple” butter and see how it turns out. We always seem to have a huge amount of zucchini I am trying to get creative with it and not let even a little go to waste.