Recently I bought a bag of apples at the store, but after a week, many of them were showing bruises. Likewise, I was at Costco and bought some giant buckets of berries... which were starting to look less than happy. What to do? Apple-berry Butter- in the crock pot. Here's the blog where I got my inspiration:
http://therovinglemon.blogspot.com/2011/02/blackberry-apple-butter.html
Perfect yummy flavors filled my house all day. But necessary to be home most of the day for this one.
Step one: Chop and core apples and trow that all in the crock pot. (I used my larger crock pot, but it could have probably worked in the little one too.) There were about 8 small apples. I just barely covered them with a little water and some cherry juice concentrate, because that is what I had. I think it cooked for a few hours. I kind of forgot about it. The apples were all soft and mushy.
Step two: Turn off the crock pot and mix in the berries. I had blackberries and blueberries probably about a pound total. I left those sit a little while to "cook" the berries in the residual heat of the crock pot. So pretty:
Step Three: I took it all out of the crock pot and put it in a bowl so I could puree it in batches and put it back in the crock pot on low for a REALLY LONG TIME. There was really more liquid in there than I expected, but it did help with the puree process.
Step Four: Cook on low with the lid vented for a long, long time. Whenever I thought about it, I mixed the butter and scraped it off the sides of the crock pot. Especially at the end, this was absolutely necessary. I added a teaspoon of lemon juice to brighten the flavors, and brown sugar, vanilla and cinnamon to taste.
The finished product: Yes, eventually, it was done. And it filled one of those big peanut butter jars. I plan to can it... another day.
It is yummy, a pretty color and would be fantastic on yogurt or oatmeal or an English muffin, or well, just about wherever you want to put it.
