While my soup was cooking on Saturday, Becky and I peeled, cored and sliced apples, preparing to make apple butter.I've never attempted it, but love eating it. I found several recipes online, but settled on one in my cookbook that used sweet apple cider. It was a slow-boil cooking method calling for 6 lbs of apples. (Who can resist the idea of apples and cider slowly boiling, filling the house with the scents of autumn? Not I!) I had bought a 10 lb. bag of Johnson apples at Avila Barn the previous week. While Joseph and I polished off part of the bag, we still had over six pounds left. After peeling and cooking, I ran them through a food processor to achieve a "uniform" consistency.
Side note: I really wish cookbooks had pictures for every step. What's a uniform consistency?
Interestingly enough, even though we boiled more than six pounds, we fell short of the 12 cups of mashed apples it should have yielded by 3 cups. It's another great food mystery.Side note: I've talked about Food Mysteries before on my LJ. I've often wondered why, even when I don't eat the dough, my cookies fall short of the predicted 3 dozen yield by almost a dozen. Also, why is it that when I sit and eat an apple whole, I can only eat one, yet if I slice it, I can polish off two or three? *cue X-Files music*
Since we couldn't make apple butter, we decided to make apple sauce. It turned out amazing. So amazing, if fact, that I'm going to run over to the Barn this week and pick up another 10 lb bag. Maybe two.
2 comments:
Why didn't you just make less apple butter than the recipe says? The easiest thing would be to halve the recipe, but you could three-quarters it too...
Halving recipes while making jam never seems to end well for me. I couldn't help but wonder if the same would be true of apple butter.
Besides, that would require actual math. :D
Post a Comment