Apple Butter in The Slow Cooker (And Cowboy Boots on My Feet)

Out of our element and/or out of our minds, we managed to somehow drive nearly an hour away for apples on Sunday. This was not a planned trip. What started out as a plea to DH to accompany me to the "country store" for deer corn and a salt lick (if you have to ask, you probably don't need to know), ended up as a diversion of the crazy kind. *I can't lift the salt lick--it weighs like fifty pounds--just an fyi. 

So, we were walking aimlessly around this store--think combo Home Depot and Bass Pro, minus the climbing walls, skis, canoes and whatnot. Shopping for bird seed and flower pots one day, I came home with a pair of cowboy boots instead!

 I wear them nearly all the time in winter. In summer sometimes, too. I love my boots! They caused a bit of a stir once. In the airport, a man stopped me and accused me of wearing "spurs"--ranting on about how I pose a risk with my "spurs". . . how could I wear these on a plane, blah, blah, blah. Was he completely mad? I don't know. He was much shorter than me. I figured he had bigger problems than my boots. I politely ignored and walked away. People are funny. 

So anyway, back to the country store. As we were waiting in the check out line, they had a lovely display of Amish jams and jellies--nothing like an impulse aisle of Amish delights to inspire you to cook. I spotted the Amish Apple Butter and that's all she wrote. I was now set on making my homemade apple butter. The only problem with that was the apples. So I turned to Dr. Thyme with a jar of the apple butter in my hand and said, Um. . . I don't think I made any apple butter last year. . . why do you suppose that was? And we both knew the answer to this. With a bit of begging on my part, we were on our way to the apple orchard.

 Neither one of us was prepared for what we saw when we arrived at the apple orchard: People. Every. Where. We pulled into the traffic-patrolled and parking-attendee-directed lot. I was sort of petrified myself. I imagined that no one, or hardly anyone would be there on this particular Sunday afternoon. My reasoning I offered to husband in talking him into this hour long diversion was this: the Cardinals AND Rams were both in Chicago--everyone will be watching the games! So you can guess what was coming out of Dr. Thyme's mouth as we navigated the car to our parking space we were directed to: Oh, no one will be there. . . there's a GAME on TV. . . What do you call this? I looked at my poor husband and said, I'm in if you're in. . . I mean we're here, right? And because I could tell I'd just done the unthinkable--drug DH out of his Sunday rest/read day for THIS. I said meekly, Just hold my hand and stay close. . . oh, and don't touch your face after we leave! (After my virus-bout, I'm a bit neurotic about crowds AND germs.) 

So this is how our apple picking went. We parked the car, walked a half mile to the general store, made a bee line to the bagged apples, grabbed three bags of the two varieties we liked and headed straight through the massive onslaught of people crammed shoulder-to-shoulder and waited, for what seemed like FOREVER, to check out. But not before rewarding ourselves with a bag of kettle corn. And that was our trip to the apple orchard.

While at the apple orchard, we struck up a conversation with one of the store "tour guides"--I guess it is sort of a destination. She was as sweet as could be. Clearly a lover of apples like us. I told her I was there to get my apple butter apples. That I love making apple butter. She shared with me her love of it, too. Then let me in on her secret recipe: apple butter in a slow cooker. . . over night. Whoa. Say what? And that was all I needed to hear--slow cooking, over night, can in the morning. Viola. Apple Butter. 

We came home with 20 pounds of apples! I got busy searching out recipes for slow cooking apple butter and found an excellent one PLUS video via Martha Stewart's site. Go figure. Martha knows all. I am happy to report that this recipe did not disappoint. In fact, this is probably one of the best batches I've had. I made English muffins yesterday, too. So this morning, we tested it out on toasted English muffins. Yum.  

What surprised me was how little I had to do to actually "cook" the apples. I added a bit more cinnamon, nutmeg, and ground cloves than the Martha recipe suggested. I like my apple butter spicy. Waking up to slow-cooker-apple-butter-aroma-filled-house was the best. You can't buy that in a candle or in a plug-in, trust me. 

The apples had cooked down considerably and to a texture that was nearly perfect. I leave the skins on my apples because I like the extra heft this gives the butter. With my stove-top method, I'd use a hand blender to puree. Not this time. After the butter cooked all night--ten and a half hours on "low", then another five hours in the morning on the "keep warm" setting, I had some of the finest apple butter I'd ever made.

So was the trip to the overly-crowded and anxiety-inducing apple orchard worth it? You bet. And did we come home with deer corn and a salt lick? Yep. And are the deer happy? See for yourself.

Look really close and you'll see at least two deer--but there were probably three more down the hill.