Dad's Crock Pot Apple Butter

I got a call from my dad a while ago.  He said that one of the nurses that he works with told him about making apple butter in the crock pot, and that I needed to come take pictures of him while he made it for my blog. (It’s nice to have supportive people in your life, isn’t it?) 

It was quite an ordeal.  Making the apple butter wasn’t an ordeal, but trying to get Dad to understand that he needed to stop for just a sec between steps so I could take a picture was the ordeal.  Dad is accustomed to delivering babies, doing surgery, and important things like that.  He’s a “get it done” type, who doesn’t fiddle-fart around like I tend to do.  Needless to say, we are missing pictures of a few steps, but it’s so simple that I’m pretty sure that you can catch on.  I have faith in you, loyal reader. 

Let me go ahead and say here that you need 4 ingredients to make this stuff.  You need equal parts (by volume) of chopped apples and sugar.  That means that if you have 6 cups of chopped apples, you need six cups of sugar.  You will also need cinnamon (that was Dad’s creative addition to the original recipe) and nonstick cooking spray. 

Start by peeling, slicing, and coring some apples.  You will need to chop them up smaller than the apples pictured above, but of course we’re missing a picture of that step.

Next, spray every inch of the Crock Pot with nonstick spray.

Pour half of the chopped apples into the bottom of the Crock Pot.

Pour half of the sugar on top of the apples, then sprinkle with ground cinnamon.

Then, pour the rest of the apples, the rest of the sugar, and some more cinnamon on top.  Cover, and let it cook on low overnight/all  day/until it’s done.

It will look like this when it’s done.

Dad said that it was too chunky for his taste when it was finished, so he took care of the problem before I even got over to my parents’ house with my camera.  I told you that he is a “get it done” type.  An emersion blender would be perfect for that, but of course we can never find the emersion blender when it’s needed.  Does anyone else have that problem?  Anyway, Dad used the hand mixer to mix it up, but I’m sure that you could also use a potato masher or even a large spoon and some serious elbow grease. 

We just put ours in jars for storage, and because it makes it look very legit, but we didn’t actually seal the jars.  If you want to, I’m sure that you can Google “canning,” but there is so much sugar in this stuff, that I think that it will last for quite a while in the fridge.