Apple Butter Time

One of my YW is selling boxes of apples right now, to finance a service trip for herself. To be helpful, I bought one. But y'all, a box of apples is a lot of apples. A lot. And so, I had to find some ways to use up apples before they all went bad. And so, to the internet! And I found a recipe for apple butter and it is delicious! And it has no sugar added, so you can feel better about eating it all. Let's dive in.
5 lbs apples (people say to get a variety, but honestly, my box had just one kind, golden delicious maybe? So I just did that)
1/4 cup water
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp lemon juice

Chop up the apples, getting rid of the cores. I just used this handy dandy tool:

and then I chopped up the apples from there, leaving the skin on. Then I put them all in my crock pot, and added the water, just to keep everything from sticking anywhere, plus the water sort of helps it all steam a bit. 

Then I just put it on low heat and let it cook for like, 6 hours, stirring it every like, half hour or hour or so, just to keep it all moving. So then, after around 6 hours, it's pretty mushy. So I smashed it down a bit with my spoon and then turned off the crockpot, for about an hour, let it all cool. Then I blended the stuff in the crockpot with my immersion blender, just until it's pretty silky smooth. 

Then, add in some cinnamon sticks! I said two earlier, but I threw in three, why not? Then I pushed them in a little bit, to let them really soak in. 

 So then, I let it cook - uncovered this time, for about another hour and a half, maybe two hours, until you reach your desired thickness. Don't know what you desire? I didn't either! I just went until it looked good and had a good color. Then, stir in the last ingredients, the cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice.
Then, put them into jars! Mine fit into 6 8-oz jars. I didn't seal them (I don't know how to seal them or how to can or anything, that's why) and they look good!

Now I'm just going to give all of these away and that's a great gift!

I hope you make this and love it, because I think it's so tasty and cinnamony. 

A great question I get is, what do you put apple butter on? I use toast. I put it on like, any bread-type item, toast, cornbread, etc. The first time I ever had apple butter was in this delicious Amish restaurant in Florida, and I just loved it. So now I'm glad to make some here!