If there’s one thing you can cook that will fill your home with the smell of fall for an entire day, it’s homemade apple butter. This easy homemade apple butter recipe is smooth and richly flavored and tastes great slathered on tons of different foods or mixed into baked goods for a pop of apple flavor. While it takes a while to cook in a slow cooker, there’s very little hands-on time involved.
What makes this such an easy recipe for apple butter is that it cooks entirely in a crock pot overnight or all day long, and there’s no peeling required. Homemade apple butter tastes like a well spiced applesauce with caramelized notes in its flavor, that has also been reduced to a spreadable consistency. If you've never made apple butter before, you'll be surprised at just how easy it is to make.
Apple butter can be bought at grocery stores, but it tends to be a little pricey, especially considering how easy it is to make yourself. A homemade apple butter recipe is also incredibly versatile. Choose your own apples or use a mixture, tweak the spices included, vary the amount of added sugar, or omit it altogether. I’ll mention a lot of these variations a little bit further down, but it’s something to keep in mind as you read through the ingredients in apple butter.
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🍏 What is Apple Butter?
First off, apple butter contains NO butter. It’s not made with any kind of butter, and it is not a type of compound butter. The butter in the name mostly refers to its consistency and spreadable function, like the texture of room temperature butter. While it can be used in many ways, apple butter is probably best known for being spread on a slice of bread.
Apple butter is basically an apple preserve, or apple jam. It’s like making applesauce but cooked a lot longer, with more spices and sugar and reduced to a thickened, spreadable consistency. It tastes great spread on toast or biscuits, or pork and chicken, and can be used as a substitute for other fats in baked goods, like I do in my maple apple blondies.
🥘 Ingredients
The ingredients for easy apple butter are fairly simple: apples, sugars, and spices. Everything can be tweaked a bit to your liking though. What makes this an easy homemade apple butter from scratch is mostly the way it is made, but also in the simplicity of the ingredients.
Apples – This apple butter recipe calls for 6 pounds of apples (before coring and chopping) but the apples you use are completely up to you. While a lot of recipes for baked apple desserts call for a handful of specific apples, apple butter can be made with almost any type of apple. Avoid mealy ones, but softer varieties that don’t usually work well in things like apple pie or an apple crisp are almost preferred here, as they break down more easily when cooked low and slow.
Sugar – A mixture of both white and brown sugars works well here. While you can make a sugar-free apple butter, sugar helps to not only caramelize the apples as they cook, but also thickens the final product. I used dark brown sugar, but light brown sugar is fine as well.
Spices – Cinnamon is the main star here, but a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ground allspice works great for a depth of flavor. You could also switch in pumpkin spice or apple pie spice, or switch ground allspice for ground cloves, etc.
Vanilla – A bit of vanilla extract works well to balance the flavors but wait to add it near the final cooking time. Adding it at the beginning will cook out what flavor it may have added. If you make your own homemade vanilla extract, I used bourbon vanilla extract here, but any is fine.
🍎 Best Apples for Apple Butter
As mentioned in the ingredients for apple butter, almost any apple is viable to be turned into apple butter. Avoid mealy apples, but softer varieties are a good choice because they break down more easily. I also love granny smith apples in a lot of recipes, but they can be a bit too tart for apple butter. If you want a slightly tart version though, feel free to use them or mix them with other apples. Red delicious can also be used, but I find them a bit mealy when cooking with.
Trying to stick with nationally available varieties, this is a decent list to pick from:
- Gala
- Fuji
- Braeburn
- Cortland
- Jonagold
- Golden Delicious
- Empire
- Pink Lady
- Honeycrisp
For reference, I used a mixture of Fuji and Gala because both varieties were available at my grocery store in 3-pound bags. That made it easy to get a mixture of apples weighing 6 pounds without needing to weigh a bunch of different options.
🔪 How to Make Apple Butter
Part of what makes this an easy homemade apple butter is the fact that you don’t need to peel the apples. You do need to chop them up however and stay slightly consistent in size so that they cook evenly. The biggest way to keep this simple considering how many apples you need to break down, is to use an apple corer and slicer. Run all your apples through that, and then cut each slice/wedge into 2-3 chunks and toss into your slow cooker.
In a small mixing bowl, combine the sugars and spices and mix well. Then toss the mixture over the apple chunks in the slow cooker. Gently stir until fully combined and you don’t see any dry pockets of the sugar and spice mixture.
Cover and set the slow cooker to low. Cook on low for 8-10 hours, stirring once or twice while cooking. Remove the lid and use an immersion blender to puree all the apple chunks until smooth. Add the vanilla extract, stir well, and then cook on low for another 2 hours with the lid removed. If you don’t have an immersion blender, transfer in batches to a regular blender and return the pureed apples to the slow cooker.
After another 2 hours, check that the apple butter has reduced somewhat and thickened. It will thicken more as it cools, but if you think it needs more time, continue reducing another 30 minutes at a time.
Allow it to cool, and then transfer to airtight containers. If using canning jars, it should make 3 pints worth, or 6 half-pints. If you’re planning on canning the apple butter, do NOT allow it to cool before transferring it.
📖 Variations
What makes homemade apple butter so appealing, besides how easy it is to make, is that it has many variations that you can tweak to make it your own.
Optional Ingredients
Apples – The choice of apple you use affects both the color and flavor of the final product. If you prefer tart apple butter, you could use all Granny Smith apples. If you prefer a sweeter apple butter, you can use all Honeycrisp apples. Or you can go with a mild flavor and use sweet-tart apples like Fuji or Golden Delicious.
Using a mixture of apples works well, and you can tweak the amount of sugar you use based on the sweetness of the apples also.
Sugar-Free – Technically, you can make apple butter without any added sugar. If you’re trying to cut back on sugar or need a lower calorie version, you can omit the sugar altogether. Keep in mind however, the sugar does more than just make apple butter sweet. Sugar also helps to caramelize the apples as they cook and thicken the final product.
Other options include using artificial sweeteners or other natural, unrefined sugars. You can also make a no sugar apple butter by swapping out the sugar with about 1 cup of apple cider and a ½ cup of maple syrup.
Spices – While the spices listed are a great choice, you can also tweak these to your preference. Ground cinnamon or cinnamon sticks are a good basis and can be used more liberally than other spices, but feel free to swap it out with pumpkin pie spice or apple pie spice mixtures. Other options to mix in include ground nutmeg, ground allspice, ground cloves, ground ginger, and ground cardamom. Most of those spices are rather potent however, so you’ll want to limit their amounts to between a ¼ and a ½ teaspoon.
Optional Cooking Methods
Instant Pot – If you have an Instant Pot and want to use that instead of making crock pot apple butter, you can. You’ll need a 6-quart model or make a half-batch. Add the apples and cover with the sugar and spice mixture, stirring to combine. Close the lid and cook on high pressure for 90 minutes, followed by 10-15 minutes of natural release of the pressure.
Use an immersion blender or blend in batches and return to the Instant Pot and stir in the vanilla extract. With the lid open, reduce the apple butter using sauté mode for 15-20 minutes, or the slow cook feature on high for about 2 hours.
Stovetop Apple Butter – If you don’t own either an Instant Pot or a slow cooker, you’re not out of luck as you can also make apple butter on the stove top with a large pot. You’ll need to add liquid in this method so the apples don’t burn, and you may want to peel the apples in this method since they don’t cook nearly as long and have the chance to naturally break down as fully.
Add all the ingredients to a large, deep pot or Dutch oven and add at least 1 cup of water, apple juice, or apple cider. Bring to a boil and then lower to a simmer. Cook, uncovered on medium-low, for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally. Blend the apples down and continue cooking on low for another hour until reduced and thickened.
Small-Batch Apple Butter – This easy homemade apple butter recipe makes 3 full pint jars worth of apple butter, but you can make a smaller batch if you don’t want to make that much, or if you don’t have a 6-7-quart slow cooker, Instant Pot, or Dutch oven.
Simply cut the recipe in half and you can make it in a 3-4-quart slow cooker (or the larger one too), and it will make 1 ½ pints or 3 half-pint jars.
Canning Homemade Apple Butter – Most recipes for apple butter can be canned without a lot of tweaks since apples have a natural acidity. I would recommend peeling the apples for canning though just for one less risk of bacteria. Have a water bath ready and hot when the apple butter is ready and pour the apple butter into the jars while still hot.
Leave a ¼ inch of headspace, pop any air bubbles, and seal finger tight. Process for 15 minutes and allow it to cool before removing from the water. This recipe isn’t specifically written for canning though, so I highly recommend doing a search for canning recipes. This is just a quick overview of the process involved.
💭 Frequently Asked Questions
The simple answer is that apples are cooked low and slow with sugar and spices until very soft and have released a lot of their juices. Then they are blended up and cooked until reduced and thickened.
Cooking time mostly. Apple butter tends to have more added spices but is essentially applesauce that is cooked much longer until very concentrated and thickened and blended much smoother.
Homemade apple butter can be refrigerated for at least 3-4 weeks, or frozen for up to a year.
Only if properly canned. Following a recipe specifically made for canning should yield jars that are shelf stable at room temperature for up to 2 years unopened.
Once cooked and blended, it is important to continue cooking uncovered so that the liquid can evaporate and reduce the apple butter. If your apple butter comes out watery or runny, you probably didn’t cook it long enough after blending, or left the slow cooker covered, which traps the steam. You can return it to a large pot or slow cooker and try to reduce it further.
The best apples for apple butter are softer varieties. These cook down and break down more easily during the slow cooking process. You can use almost any variety however, and a mixture of apples works great. Some of the most commonly used include Gala, Golden Delicious, Fuji, Honeycrisp, Courtland, etc.
🍽 Equipment
While this easy homemade apple butter is simple to make, there are a handful of tools that you’ll want to have to make it. At the least, you’ll need to own or have access to a large cooking vessel and a method for blending the cooked apples.
Apple Corer & Slicer – If you make a lot of apple recipes, a decent apple slicer and corer is a cheap investment and makes prep much easier. I don’t bother using one when I only need a few apples, but in a recipe like this that uses well over 20 apples, it seriously cuts down on the prep time.
Slow Cooker – Whether you call it a slow cooker or a Crock Pot (which is a brand), you’ll want a large 6-quart slow cooker for making the full recipe, or a 3-4-quart slow cooker for making a small batch. Alternatively, you can make this recipe in a similarly sized Instant Pot or a large, 7-quart Dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot.
Blender – An immersion blender works really well for making homemade apple butter since you can blend everything right inside of the slow cooker. They’re a nice tool to have around for a lot of applications, but you can also use a decent, regular blender as well, but you’ll probably need to transfer and blend in batches.
Canning Jars – Any airtight storage container works fine, but I recommend using pint or half-pint mason jars for the best storage. You could also go with more decorative jars if making apple butter as gifts, or squatter, wide-mouth jars as well.
❄️ Storage
Homemade apple butter should be stored in airtight containers, canning jars work well for this purpose. Stored in the refrigerator, it should last for about a month or longer. Use your best judgment and toss it out if you think it’s gone rancid.
You can also store it in airtight containers in the freezer for up to 1 year. If using canning jars, be sure to leave at least ¼ to ½ inch of headspace.
If properly canned, homemade apple butter should be good at room temperature for up to 2 years unopened. Transfer to the refrigerator once opened. As a reminder, this recipe was not specifically written for canning, so be sure to look up actual canning recipes.
📋 Recipe
Easy Homemade Apple Butter
Ingredients
- 6 pounds apples, cored and chopped into ½-inch chunks
- ¾ cup dark brown sugar, packed
- ½ cup white sugar
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon ground allspice
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Directions
- Core and chop 6 pounds of apples into roughly ½-inch chunks and toss into a 6-7-quart slow cooker.
- In a small mixing bowl, combine ¾ cup dark or light brown sugar, ½ cup white sugar, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg, ¼ teaspoon ground allspice, and ½ teaspoon salt and mix well. Then toss the mixture over the apple chunks in the slow cooker. Gently stir until fully combined and you don’t see any dry pockets of the sugar and spice mixture.
- Cover and set the slow cooker to low. Cook on low for 8-10 hours, stirring once or twice while cooking. Remove the lid and use an immersion blender to puree all the apple chunks until smooth. Add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, stir well, and then cook on low for another 2 hours with the lid removed. If you don’t have an immersion blender, transfer in batches to a regular blender and return the pureed apples to the slow cooker.
- After another 2 hours, check that the apple butter has reduced somewhat and thickened. It will thicken more as it cools, but if you think it needs more time, continue reducing another 30 minutes at a time.
- Allow it to cool, and then transfer to airtight containers. If using canning jars, it should make 3 pints worth, or 6 half-pints.
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