It maybe a bit out of sequence (sorry utahs.f.) but I keep meaning to post my experiences this season with apple butter, which is highly popular around here. I used Roma apples - roughly chopped, wormy bits (few) removed, and enough to fill a 3 gal stock pot, stems, seeds, skin and all. Added a couple cups of water and simmered on low until soft, 2-3 hours. Let that cool overnight, then I ran it all through the tomato strainer, resulting in a thick applesauce, seeds, skin, and stems removed. I ladled all that out (approx two gallons)and used the dehydrator to make fruit leather. Started another batch of chopped apples in the stock pot. The next morning, the leather was done, the chopped apples cooked and cooled, so I made apple sauce from that, tore up the sheets of fruit leather, and added brown sugar, cinnamon, and a bit of lime juice and put the whole thing in the 2+ gal crock pot. Turned it on 'high' until it started to blurble, turned it on low. It was all done, deep brown and so thick a fork would stand up in it, that evening, 7 hours later. Yield was 13 pints. So, I dunno, I still used a lot of electricity, with simmering the stock pot twice for a total of 6 hours, 14 hours of food dehydrator, and another 7 hours of crock pot. Pretty good stuff, though. We did this twice, used about 2 bushels of apples, and ended up with 30 pints. It seemed to me that cooking the peels and all made for lots of pectin, which thickened it up. It was really easy to run it all through the strainer, only took a few minutes. Making fruit leather with half of it kept the intense apple flavor, which went back into the final result. I think we'll do this the next time as well.

I can't imagine being concerned about the safety of processed apple butter even though I am a stickler when canning low acid foods. It's almost like being afraid of grape jelly. I don't know Annie's receipt, but mine is highly sugared and acidified and even though the density is increased when it is rendered down, the sugar and acid content per quantity of product is also raised when it is reduced by evaporative cooking. I process mine a full ten minutes in pint jars because I don't like to boil my jars just run them through the dishwasher, and it's just as likely to be in a pressure canner as a BWB. The 'overprocessing' has never been an issue with the quality of the finished product since you're not concerned with jelling. I would be more concerned with a low acid product like a sweet potato butter, because I have heard of confirmed cases of botulism in those. I have never heard of any documented cases of it in apple butter. I fully buy into the better safe than sorry mind-set but really don't understand why the safety of that would be questioned.

Not apple butter..... The clue is cook to the jell stage and the other clue is the amount of sugar. Apple butter has very little sugar compared to the amount of apples and is pretty much apples a littls sugar and spices reduced way down. Linda C Here is a link that might be useful: how to make applebutter

Thank you! I will let you know how it turns out. We're a day behind at the moment ;-) We went to Claim Jumper last night for dinner as FIL has been waiting for months to enjoy beef ribs with his son. Before we left, I went online to check out the nutritional information. FIL and DH ended up sharing a half rack of ribs (which was fine), and MIL ordered Tri-Tip off the senior menu. They both had roasted veggies for sides. They made good choices, mostly by portion control. However, I noted that the vast majority of their entrees were over 2,000 calories per entree - not including sides. That was just scary. We were out celebrating both my sons' birthdays, one a few weeks ago and one next week. No one had room for the TCBY cake that had been requested by them, so we're having it tonight. Apple crisp will be on the menu for tomorrow. I currently have one batch of applesauce cooking on the stove, and the remainder of 40 pounds of apples on the dining room table. My house smells rather apple-y!