An Apple Butter Recipe to Make Your Home Smell Amazing
When a onetime Gourmet test-kitchen cook launches a cookbook on a topic we love, such as apples, our ears perk up. We tested the apple butter recipe from Andrea Albin’s hot-off-the-press book over the weekend, and it’s like potpourri you can eat: Not only does it taste divine—all fiery with ginger and sweet with caramelized apples—but the scent lingers so long it makes you want to lick the walls. Bonus: You don’t even need butter to make apple butter. You just need an orchard.
Gingered Apple Butter
by Andrea Albin, Apples
Makes 2 cups
Apple butter distills the flavor of apples down to their very essence; one taste can evoke the spirit of autumn in its entirety. My addition of ginger, in both fresh and powdered forms, elongates the seasonal charm of this dish with a new level of warmth and complexity. You can enjoy the butter in a number of ways, but I particularly love it on French toast.
4 pounds mixed apples, such as Cortland, Pink Lady and Braeburn—peeled, cored and chopped into 3⁄4-inch cubes
2 cups apple cider
1 cup light brown sugar
One 2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and minced
Preheat the oven to 300°. Combine all the ingredients in a Dutch oven and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer, partially covered, until the apples are soft, about 25 minutes. Use an immersion blender to puree the apples (or puree in a blender in batches).
Transfer the Dutch oven, uncovered, to the oven. Bake, stirring every 20 minutes and scraping the bottom so that it does not burn, until the mixture is very thick and dark brown, 2 to 2 1⁄2 hours. Cool completely, then transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to serve. The apple butter will keep for up to 1 week.
