Pumpkin Apple Butter

October has been crazy hectic, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been baking. I fit it in where I can, then I try to also fit in the photo taking and then the blog post writing, and all that goes into that. Good news is, I’m back from the mini-hiatus with quite a few delicious recipes to share that go perfectly with the season.

I went to visit an apple orchard a few weeks ago, and we came home with a ‘peck’ of apples–which translates to several pounds. Now as much as I love apples, it’s just not possible to eat that many before they spoil.

There was only one logical conclusion to this:

A LOT of apple baking.

As a result, you all can expect the recipes from now until the holidays to largely be my sharing everything I did with the apples from the orchard visit, starting with the recipe for today: pumpkin apple butter.

Apple butter is basically applesauce (mashed apples) that’s been cooked longer until the flavor becomes more concentrated and richer. It’s also a lot more smoother in texture, so it makes for a great condiment to eat with things like toast, biscuits or cookies.

I’ve made apple butter before, and even ‘butter’ with other fruits, like peaches and nectarines. It’s a very simple and no-fuss recipe, but even more relevant to today is that it’s a great way to use up a large amount of apples if you need to.

I made a few tweaks to this recipe to make it even more suited for the autumn season and tastebuds. First, I combined the apple with raw, pureed pumpkin. Second, I added pumpkin pie spice and a generous helping of diced crystallized ginger to give it added kick of flavor.

This smelled so, SO good cooking over my stove. It filled the house with a wonderful aroma that made me so impatient for the apple butter to finish cooking so I could try it exactly as you see here: smeared over a piece of wheat toast, or dunked with a ginger snap cookie.

It did not disappoint.

If you’re like me and you have a bunch of apples sitting around from an orchard trip, this is a great, fool-proof use for them.

Happy Halloween!