Last week we went apple picking. We picked Harlow’s weight in apples. Seriously.

While it is really fun to spend family time, be outside, and find perfect apples to pick, the problem with picking 40lbs of apples, is that you are left with 40lbs of apples. What exactly does one do with 40lbs of apples?

You get in the kitchen!

I made 8 jars of apple butter (oh my GOODNESS my house smelled amazing while I was making it!!!), and apple muffins.

On top of that, we’ve been eating scads of apples on the daily, and we are actually down to just a dozen or so!

Apple Butter Recipe:

Throw everything into a Crock-Pot on low and cook for 10 hours, stirring every few hours. After 10 hours, use an immersion blender to make everything nice and smooth, then cook, uncovered, another two hours or until to the consistency you want.

I “sort of” canned mine. For the first batch, I filled 4 jars while the apple butter was still hot, and let them cool upside-down. Supposedly, that seals them, but I’m always too nervous to store them outside of the fridge/freezer, because I don’t want them to spoil, and miss out on the deliciousness! Same with the second round, but on the second batch, I canned them in a more traditional way, by boiling them in the jars for 10 minutes, THEN letting them cool upside-down. Still, I stuck them in the freezer when they were cool.

For the Apple Muffins, I used this recipe. While it was good, if I were to make them again, I would skip the cinnamon sugar topping. I would either leave them as they are, or maybe do some sort of a very light powdered sugar glaze. The topping was REALLY overpowering, and while it was delicious, it was hard to taste the apples at all. I also might add some ripe bananas to give it some extra moisture. I do still have a bunch of green apples left, and the tartness of the green apples might be really good in the muffins. If I remake them, I’ll let you know how it goes!

I have found, though, that what is the best of all, is combining the two! Apple butter smeared on these apple muffins is just incredible! Yum!

Happy fall, ya’ll!