Slow Cooker Apple Butter

Apple butter does not actually have butter in it. Very tricky, apple butter. You had us fooled. What else do you have up your sleeve? Turning from this...



into this?



12 small apples (or about 8-9 medium apples)
1/4 cup apple cider (cider is preferred but juice is ok)
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Peel, core, and chop the apples into slices. Don't worry about them looking pretty, just as long as they're all roughly the same size.



Put the apple pieces into the slow cooker, spread evenly. Pour the cider over the apples, and sprinkle each of the dry ingredients and the vanilla evenly over the apples.



Cook on high for one hour, then cook on low for 8-10 hours (I was ok with 8 hours, but if your apples are bigger you might need 9 or 10). Stir every few hours. Here's what I had after 2 and a half hours:



After 5 hours:



After 7 hours:



And at the end. You can see on the left side I started mashing the apples up with a fork. Just take the back side of a fork, or a potato masher and crush the apples while in the slow cooker. Or you could scoop them out into a bowl and do it, but I wanted to do it in the slow cooker in case they ended up needing to cook a little more.



Some recipes say to put the apple mixture into a blender (or use an immersion blender) once they're done cooking, which you certainly could do, but I wanted my apple butter to be a bit chunky.



Spread on a roll/croissant/biscuit/pancakes/potato latke. I used only 3/4 cups of brown sugar, but many recipes call for a lot more. I didn't want mine to be overly sweet, and the variety of apples (Gala, Golden Delicious) I used were already pretty sweet. If you use apples that are more tart, like Granny Smith, you probably want to add more sugar. You can do a combination of brown and granulated sugar, too. Apple butter can of course be made without a slow cooker, but this way was so easy. Plus, it makes your house/apartment smell good all day!

Marmalade

I'm sad to say, I don't really like citrus fruit that much. It's just not my favorite. I do like clementines, but I'm not such a fan of oranges or grapefruits. Citrus-flavored things, on the other hand, I do enjoy. I keep seeing these beautiful blood oranges at the store, and since it's nearing the end of citrus season I finally decided I should find some way to use them. Marmalade!



I generally knew what marmalade was, but upon a little research discovered that marmalade is a fruit preserve made of citrus fruit, sugar, and water, and it incorporates zest and/or peel. So there you go. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't an easy project. It's simple, but labor and time intensive. But, no job = time to make marmalade on a Wednesday afternoon. I found this recipe online, but it's from Country Living's Country Morning Cookbook. Yee-haw! Here goes...

5 blood oranges
2 cups water
2 cups sugar

Rinse the oranges thoroughly. Using vegetable peeler, remove orange part of peel in strips from oranges. Cut strips into 1-by 1/8-inch strips. With knife, cut off all white membrane, or pith, from peeled oranges.




Cut peeled oranges crosswise into 1/4- inch-thick slices. Remove the seeds as you slice through the oranges. In heavy nonaluminum 5-quart kettle or Dutch oven, combine orange peel, sliced fruit, and water. Cover and refrigerate 3 to 4 hours.

Heat orange mixture to boiling over high heat, stirring frequently.

Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until orange mixture is very soft, about 1 hour.



Add sugar to orange mixture and increase heat to medium-high; stir until sugar dissolves. Heat to boiling and reduce heat just so mixture boils gently. Boil uncovered, stirring frequently, until candy thermometer registers 220 degrees F., 45 to 60 minutes.

A few notes: this recipe is actually for lemon marmalade, but I wanted to make orange. You can use whatever...oranges, lemons, grapefruits, or limes. Just make sure the ratio of fruit to water/sugar is the same as this recipe. The original recipe called for 10 large lemons, 4 cups water, 4 cups sugar. I figured since blood oranges are a little smaller than regular oranges, one would be about equal to a large lemon. And as you can see I cut the recipe in half.

So after 60 minutes of cooking the orange mixture with the sugar, it still wasn't looking good. Maybe I had the heat too low, not sure, but I increased it a bit, added a little bit more sugar, and let it cook for another 20 minutes. When it's ready, it's not going to look like marmalade in a jar...because it's hot and melty. If you don't have a candy thermometer (which I don't), spoon a little bit onto a cool plate and stick it in the fridge for a few minutes and see if it's becoming gooier and less watery. Very scientific descriptions. But keep in mind once you put it in a container and put it in the fridge, it's going to set and become more gel-like. This recipe made about 3 cups of marmalade.

And...the finished product. It has a slight bitter taste, due to the peel. This is apparently the British version of marmalade - more peel/zest, which the American version has less so it's sweeter. Anyway, I had it on some toast and it tasted great. I think it would be really good on some pork chops...




Here's another marmalade recipe that looks pretty good (but a little fancier), from New York Magazine this week.

Strawberry Deliciousness

It's a double post kind of day! A couple weeks ago I was craving a strawberry milkshake with Haagen Dazs ice cream. Mmmmm....visions of summer, warm weather, sunshine...oh wait, it's February in Chicago *snap back to reality*.

I decided to make a smoothie instead, and after some research online through different recipes I came up with this which is a combination of a few different methods.



1/4 cup uncooked plain old-fashioned oatmeal
1 container Greek yogurt, about 5 or 6 oz.
1/4 cup milk
1 or 2 handfulls of frozen strawberries
honey to taste (optional)

Blend just the oatmeal in a blender to get it chopped up, just for about 15-20 seconds. Add everything else and blend until smooth. So easy!

Of course if you are trying to keep it healthy, use low or nonfat yogurt and milk. I prefer to use vanilla flavored nonfat Greek yogurt, from Trader Joe's. You can also use plain, or honey flavor, or whatever you like. If you use a flavored yogurt you don't really need the honey. Same goes for the berries - use frozen blueberries, raspberries, whatever. Yum!