Sprout & Pea

Recently read­ing Heather Taylor’s post on her apple but­ter can­ning visit with Jen Smith made me yearn for a farm of fresh apples to make my own apple but­ter with. The beau­ti­ful pho­tos and write up of the day on Heather’s blog L.A. In Bloom inspired me to wake up early this past Sun­day morn­ing and seek out the next best thing: fresh apples from my local farmer’s mar­ket. Later in the after­noon, I returned home with a huge batch of locally grown apples and two very spe­cial ingre­di­ents in Jen’s recipe– rose­wa­ter and car­damom.

I can’t say that I wasn’t envi­ous of Jen’s apple peeler, but look­ing for­ward to a peace­ful evening of slow cook­ing, I was happy to take my time with my reg­u­lar old tra­di­tional peeler. After two hours of occa­sion­ally stir­ring Jen’s apple but­ter recipe in a large pot, the aro­mas in my kitchen were incred­i­ble and I couldn’t wait to taste the fin­ished prod­uct. When I finally took a bite, I don’t think my taste buds knew what to do with them­selves. If you have the time to mon­i­tor the cook­ing apples, make this apple but­ter! It is one of the most incred­i­ble things I have tasted. Even Bodega (my kit­ten) couldn’t resist a lit­tle taste…

One thing to note is that you’ll need a lot of apples to make a decent amount of apple but­ter– eleven large apples only yielded a jar and a half for me. Next time (because there will def­i­nitely be a next time) I plan to stock up on more apples and can this as gifts for peo­ple. Here is Jen’s sim­ple in tech­nique but com­plex in fla­vor recipe for apple butter…

5lbs Organic Fuji Apples, peeled, cored and sliced
2 T lemon juice
4 two inch slices of Gin­ger
20 Car­damom pods in cheese cloth (I couldn’t find car­damom pods, so I added a tsp of ground car­damom halfway through cook­ing)
1 T Rose Water

Com­bine first four ingre­di­ents.
Sim­mer for two hours, stir­ring reg­u­larly to pre­vent burn­ing, or until almost no mois­ture is left. Remove gin­ger slices and car­damom bun­dle.
Mash or puree the apples.
Add rose water.
Ster­il­ize jars. Fill jars with but­ter. Process in water bath for 10 min­utes.
Makes about 5 half pints.