Applesauce and Apple Butter - Finished!!!

It really felt good to pull out the last jars of applesauce and apple butter and listen to them ping! They will taste so good this winter. I really hadn't planned on making any this year, but I heard our local orchard had really nice deer apples available for $8.99 a bushel.  I asked hubby to get a bushel on his way home from work one day and was floored to see these "nice" apples! Many were the size of golf balls and some may have reached almost tennis ball size, but that would really be pushing it. What was I going to do with all of those pathetically small apples?!!! (As you can see in the photo, that is only a half bushel of apples. They are tiny!!)

I ended up making 2 large apple crisps, few jars of dehydrated apples, and the rest in sauce and butter. I'm pretty sure the orchard is not organic, so I had to peel them. I had put it off, since I know how long that takes and tried to ignore them as long as possible. I made and apple crisp first and although it was good, I kept wondering if I lost my mind getting these! Then I did the dried apples - oh my. That took forever. It about killed me to to compost all the peelings, because I really wanted to make apple jelly out of them. But at least they didn't go to waste!

I left the second half bushel in garage as long as I could. I tried to ignore it but as the temperatures went down in the teens at night, I knew I had to use them or lose them to the  cold temps. Ignoring would no longer be an option! I peeled and peeled and peeled and then cored for 5 LONG hours. Nope, not an exaggeration. They were too small to go on the apple peeler, so it had to be done the old fashioned way. I can't complain though, as it gave me time to listen to some podcasts that I wouldn't have found otherwise.

I added a few larger apples we had gotten at the university outlet. They have a nice orchard and gardens that are used as classrooms/research for the students. Every year, the abundance is brought in to the outlet and sold. Hubby will pick them up on his way home from work sometimes, so I had a mix of those apples as well. I didn't care for the one batch of sauce that I made. There was a flavor from one type of apple in it I just didn't like. I made apple butter out of that batch and the batch that was made specifically for the apple butter was turned into sauce. That batch had apple cider in it. It's a good thing that one cooks down the apples first before sweetening and adding spices!

I don't normally sweeten, but the spices seem to add a bitterness I didn't like, so I put in a bit of honey and a bit of sugar - I'd say not even a quarter of a cup,  but it made all the difference. I don't think I would have even had to do that if I had cooked this batch with the cider, but it wasn't an issue. I certainly wouldn't have added all the sugar that the Ball book has. Three whole cups for a batch and I had more than one batch in the pot! UGH!

After a few canner loads of jars, I had finally finished what I had put off for so long and it felt good. The jars still need their rings removed, then washed and labeled and finally put away on the shelf. That's on today's to-do list.