We have a farm near us here that sells 40b boxes of apples for $10 every Friday, so I have been busy making apple pies, apple sauce, and now apple butter. I’ve made the slow cooker versions of apple butter before and really loved them, but I thought that it would be nice to get a batch of it done in an afternoon vs a entire day and a half in the slow cooker (including canning).
Because my apples are the Pink Lady variety and pretty sweet already, I only used 3 cups of sugar total for 10lbs of apples for this recipe, and it tasted very sweet when it was done. Most online apple butter recipes ask for more than twice that amount of sugar, but it all depends on the sweetness of your apples and the level of sweet tooth your household has.
This recipe is super simple and the longest part is peeling the apples. I peel mine because they are not organic, but if yours are you could always leave the peels on- especially since much of the nutrition of the apple is in the peel. It will break down in the cooking process and still blend up smoothly with a hand blender.
For this recipe you will need:
- 10lbs apples
- 1.5 cups white sugar
- 1.5 cups brown sugar
- 3 Tablespoons cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 cup water
First, peel and core the apples
Now add 1 cup of water to your Instant Pot and then layer in half the apples. Sprinkle both sugars over the apples and then add in the rest. Put the cinnamon and cloves on top of the remaining apples. This left my Instant Pot very full, as you can see- I could barely get the top on.
Then set your Instant Pot to cook for 2 hours on manual pressure with the valve in the sealed position.
When the time is up, place a dish towel over the steam valve and do a quick release. Press cancel on the Instant Pot so that it doesn’t stay warm and open the lid. I let my apples cool for a while before I used my hand blender on them so that I didn’t burn my hand while blending.
As you can see, the apples break down a lot and shrink down in size to half the volume that you started with.
My apples and spices blended down easily with a hand blender into a smooth, silky consistency.
You can now either freeze your apple butter in mason jars or tupperware, or process in a water bath and can. I ended up with 11 pints of dark, tasty apple butter to enjoy and give out to friends.
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