{"id":319,"date":"2009-10-19T10:33:38","date_gmt":"2009-10-19T14:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crispybits.ca\/?p=319"},"modified":"2009-10-26T10:33:52","modified_gmt":"2009-10-26T14:33:52","slug":"apple-butter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/?p=319","title":{"rendered":"Apple Butter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"applebutter\"<\/p>\n

Fair Warning: I was not impressed with this Roasted Apple Butter recipe; employ at your own risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I love preserving.\u00a0 Correction: I love the idea of preserving.\u00a0 Concentrating fruits to their purest essences, brining carrots and peppers and beans in a sweet and spicy elixir, rows of sparkly jars on the sheves, sharing these jars with friends and family.\u00a0 It also involves a lot of work, a lot of space, a lot of dirtied pots and pans and stovetops and cabinets, and a lot of produce to produce a very small yield.\u00a0 I did not let this daunt me, however, and had my intentions set on plucking apples from trees in a rolling orchard and honouring them with a special treatment, not unlike last year’s attempts at Christine Ferber’s delicious recipe for apple compote.<\/p>\n

Well, folks, the plans fell through.\u00a0 We never made it to the apple orchard after all.\u00a0 We got rained out and colds were running rampant among certain members of the crew so we put the road trip on hold indefinitely.\u00a0 Instead, I had to get my apple fix at St. Lawrence Market and\u00a0rely on the kindness of a friend to drive me home with ten pounds of apples.\u00a0\u00a0 My apple butter recipe calls for a mix of sweet apples to add complexity, so I elected McIntosh and Northern Spy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"applebowl\"<\/p>\n

I’m not a big apple snacker.\u00a0 When I do indulge, I prefer\u00a0hard, crisp, cold apples…preferably Granny Smith.\u00a0\u00a0I wanted something a little more local, though, and McIntosh\u00a0apples are deeply rooted in Canadian history dating back to about 1811\u00a0when\u00a0they were discovered on the McIntosh homestead in Dundas, Ontario.\u00a0\u00a0 Known for its red and green skin, semi-tart flavour and tender white flesh, it’s\u00a0been a popular staple in many students’ school lunches because of its smallish size and healthful properties.<\/p>\n

Northern Spy apples also come into season a little later and\u00a0have a similar colouring but are known for its\u00a0firmer flesh and rich, sweet aromatic flavour.\u00a0 I thought the two would complement each other\u00a0in the apple butter…so on with the adventure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"applepeeling\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0This recipe came to me by way of a newish cookbook in my collection: Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It.\u00a0 The book has some marvelous ideas for making more of your unconventional food items like marshmallows, jerky, cheese, olives, ketchup, etc.\u00a0 I found these recipes immensely appealing and was eager to try one.\u00a0 Now I know that apple butter is not a stretch for the home preserver.\u00a0 In fact, it’s one of the rather simple things to make; one doesn’t need to worry so much about the alchemy that causes fruit to gel and set.\u00a0 This recipe, however, calls for roasting the peeled-and-quartered apples for a couple of hours and then pureeing them with the additional seasonings.\u00a0 This was a nice alternative to the traditional stove-top stewing method and is meant to enhance the colour and flavours.\u00a0 Easy peasy.<\/p>\n

\"rawroastapples\"<\/p>\n

Well, it was sort of easy.\u00a0 But it was also messy.\u00a0 I nearly destroyed two of my best baking sheets in the process.\u00a0 I lined them both with foil and gave them a spray of oil to prevent the apples from sticking.\u00a0 After two hours in the oven, the apples joyfully carmelized and fused to every exposed surface of the pan.\u00a0 Even the foil couldn’t be removed.\u00a0 It was a nightmare.\u00a0 So I scraped off as much of the mush as I could and processed it in the Cuisinart for a good long time.<\/p>\n

Glory be: those ten pounds of apples produced a frugal 4.5 jars of sticky, cinnamony, beige spread.\u00a0 The flavour was fine, but I doubt I’d ever make it again.\u00a0 I had to use my power steamer to clean the baking sheets and the recipe has left me a tad nervous to try another recipe from the book.\u00a0 But I’ve already used the apple butter in a vegan banana bread recipe, so good things have come from the experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fair Warning: I was not impressed with this Roasted Apple Butter recipe; employ at your own risk.\u00a0 I love preserving.\u00a0 Correction: I love the idea of preserving.\u00a0 Concentrating fruits to their purest essences, brining carrots and peppers and beans in a sweet and spicy elixir, rows of sparkly jars on the sheves, sharing these jars […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4,7],"tags":[80,74,91,68,81,110,44],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":350,"href":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions\/350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crispybits.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}