Apple & pear butter
Servings: 500 ml
If there are members of your household prone to taking a nibble out of pieces of fruit and leaving the rest to shrivel and brown, have I got a recipe for you! Although it’s called a ‘butter’, there’s actually no butter in it – more of a jam, by another name, really. I’ve included apple juice, because you’ve probably got some going to seed on the fridge door, or some juice boxes squashed in the school bag. But feel free to swap this for water, and add an extra tablespoon of sugar to balance. The splash of cider vinegar makes this lovely and tart, and the cinnamon will make your morning toast taste like apple pie.
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Ingredients
- 1 kg apples and pears
- 2 cups apple juice
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ lemon zested and juiced
- 1 tbsp raw sugar
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Chop apples and pears up, without removing the skin or cores. Place in a medium sized saucepan along with the apple juice, vinegar and cinnamon. Cook apples and pears on a medium heat for 30-40 mins. The fruit needs to be so soft it’s falling apart, with the liquid almost evaporated.
- Once ready, place a fine mesh metal sieve over a bowl and mush through a ¼ of the fruit mixture (if you’ve got a mouli at the back of the cupboard from that time you decided to make gnocchi from scratch, use that instead). Once you’re left with just the skins and cores in the sieve, compost these (or dehydrate for apple skin chips!) and start mushing again with more of the fruit mixture.
- In the end you’ll have about 500ml of fruit pulp. Add this back into the same saucepan with the lemon zest, juice, sugar and salt (the salt means you need to add less sugar!). Cook down on low for another 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes so that it doesn't stick. Once thick and glossy, remove from the heat. Transfer to a clean, dry container or jar while still hot. This will last in the fridge for a few weeks.
