"apple butter" news and stories

I first discovered Debby Bull's Blue Jelly five years ago, when a friend thrust a copy into my hands, looked me in the eye and said, "You need to read this book. You will love it." Despite receiving it with such a vigorous endorsement, the slim, blue hardback sat on my bookshelf for more than six months before I picked it up. Every time I saw the friend to whom the book belonged, I would feel a pang of guilt and apologize that I hadn't read it yet. She would just smile peacefully, tilt her head and say, "I'm not worried. You'll read it when you're ready."

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon when I finally cracked the cover. My previous resistance dropped away and I spent the rest of that day reading through Bull's tale of love lost and recover through the making of jam. It sparked my interest in jam and fruit butter making (although I did also grow up with a mother who makes at least 30 pints of jam every summer) and made me remember the power of doing something from scratch.

The book is a series of essays about Bull's process as she recovers from being dumped, and at the end of each essay is a recipe for a different jam, jelly, butter or pickle. The recipes are full of soul and character and following her instructions makes you feel like you're being guided through the cooking and canning process by an old, witty friend who you don't get to see very often.

I realize we're heading into the end of the canning season at this point, but it's never too late to be inspired for next year. This book is just the thing to make you leap off your couch and towards the kitchen to make up a nice batch of jam.

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Sometime early last month, I went out to Linvilla Orchards in Media, PA with a friend to pick apples. I came home with an overflowing half bushel box, awash in good intentions. However, life got in the way and I let the apples sit for longer than I would have liked. They got a bit mealy as the sugars turned to starch and so the only treatment for them was to turn them into applesauce and apple butter (two things I love, so I wasn't particularly sad).

Years ago, when I first started making applesauce, I would labor over the apples, peeling, coring and chopping them into fine pieces. These days, my technique is a little more slapdash. I do still core the apples and I chop the quarters into smaller bits. But I skip the peeling part altogether, which saves an amazing amount of time and hand cramping.

Instead, I cook the apples down (with lots of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and lemon zest) with the peels still attached. When I'm able to mash an apple piece with the back of a wooden spoon, I take the whole mess off the stove and run the apples through a Foley Food Mill. It purees the apples into a nice, even sauce that still has some good mouth feel and gets rid of the peels at the same time. It's really easy to boot. If you make a lot of applesauce (or stewed tomatoes or peaches) this tool will become an invaluable addition to your kitchen gadgetry.

When you get a bunch of fresh fruit, it is always tempting to try to do something with it when you know that you won't be able to eat it all at once. Berries get stirred into muffins, bananas are baked into bread, pumpkins end up as pie and apples can be anything from pie to apple sauce. Brilynn at Jumbo Empanadas decided to make up a batch of apple butter, which despite its name, is far more like a soft jelly or jam than actual butter. Her experience, cleverly illustrated, was not without incident and reminds us of one of the fundamental rules of cooking: follow a recipe when it is the first time you're making something. As much a TV chef and other professionals say that you can experiment and play with your food, even they started with a basic recipe from a book, a friend or a relative.

Brilynn's apple butter turned out in the end, but do take her advice and at least read the directions once before beginning. That way you're guaranteed a good result, stress-free cooking and, if you're lucky, you'll feel prepared enough to branch out into other types of fruit butters, including pumpkin butter or pear butter.

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