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How to make crab apple butter using a mixture of crab apples and eating apples, brown sugar, and autumn spices. This recipe uses a traditional stovetop method and makes two pints of delicious and dark apple preserve that you use as a jam-like spread or as an accompaniment to savory dishes such as pork and cheese. For this recipe, you can use crab apples, windfall apples, or flowering quince—your choice!

Crab Apple Butter Recipe with Autumn Spices

Apples can be a sweet and juicy harvest, but if you want to preserve and cook with them, tart varieties are the best. They have so much more depth than eating apples, and their sourness complements sugar and spices perfectly. Cooking apples, like Bramleys, are excellent in cooked apple recipes, but so are unripe or windfall apples. You can even use smaller and much tarter crab apples and flowering quince fruit in moderation in making apple recipes.

Using them as a quarter to a third of the apples in sweet recipes adds an interesting tartness that pairs perfectly with deep sweet flavors. You can use them to make jam, apple pie, and apple sauce, but homemade crab apple butter is a delicious autumn treat.

This crab apple butter recipe is a rich fruit preserve that you can serve as a sweet topping on toast, cakes, pancakes, scones, crumpets, or P&J sandwiches. The tartness of the apples, paired with the deep, rich sweetness of brown sugar, cinnamon, and spices, gives it a versatile flavor that you could even use in savory dishes, especially over the holidays. Pair it with crackers and cheese, or serve it with roast pork or turkey. It’s easy to make, too!

Harvesting Crab Apples

The ingredients for this recipe are simple and accessible, and I imagine that most people who make it will have crab apple trees. Crab apples are usually grown as a decorative tree or to help pollinate eating apple varieties, rather than as a food crop. They’re also wildly prolific, and though the fruit can be as small as a marble, there are dozens of them on each branch. They taste extremely tart, making them unpleasant for eating raw, but fortunately, we can cook with them!

Branches of a crabapple tree laden with fruit lean out over a short and curved white wall. — Crab apples are tiny, tart apples that grow in clusters on trees.

Crab apples come in many different sizes and colors (red, orange, yellow, green), just like our more familiar eating apples. They’re ready to harvest in late summer to autumn, and are ready to pick when the flesh feels firm but not rock solid. They are always very sour and sometimes tannic, but if you nibble on them and they don’t completely pucker your face up from their sharpness, they’re ready to pick. They may even have a hint of sweetness.

Looking down into a green plastic tub filled with small green apples. — You can also use unripe apples that have fallen from the tree to make this recipe.

If you don’t grow crab apples, they can be challenging to find, since they’re not your usual supermarket fruit. In that case, you could forage for them if you know of a wild tree, or substitute crab apples with sour cooking apples or windfall apples—it’s an excellent recipe for unripe eating apples that have been blown down from the tree. You can also use flowering quince fruit to make this recipe.

How to Make Crab Apple Butter

If you’re unfamiliar with apple butter, think of it as a thick, fruity spread that’s a little like the love-child of apple sauce and jam. It’s a fantastic preserve to make in late summer to autumn with a mixture of sweet and sour apples, especially those that won’t keep very well. Windfall apples can be both unripe and fully ripe, but often have bruises, rot, or some blemish. That makes them unsuitable for storing fresh, but they are a candidate for preserves. Just cut the blemishes off and use the rest of the apple to make crab apple butter.

A spoon holds up a scoop of dark golden brown, somewhat grainy but glistening apple butter. — Apple butter is a thick, dark fruit spread that you can use as you would jam or apple sauce.

Though this recipe can use crab apples, don’t feel limited to that. You can use any sour-tasting apple for the crab apple portion of the recipe. The apple juice, sugar, vanilla, and spices complement the flavor and create the most scrumptious apple preserve you’ve ever had!

Homemade Crab Apple Butter Recipe: How to make crab apple butter using a mixture of crab apples and eating apples, brown sugar, and autumn spices. Use this delicious and dark preserve as you would other fruit preserves, or as an accompaniment to savory dishes such as pork and cheese. You can use crab apples, windfall apples, or flowering quince to make this recipe #preserving #applerecipe #crabapples

To make apple butter, you first cook the apples until soft and then run them through a food mill. A hand-cranked one is easier to use than a manual one. Then you return the apple puree to the pan, add sugar and spices, and cook until it’s thick. Bottle it up, and you have an incredible, dark fruit spread to enjoy in your choice of sweet or savory dishes. If you have apple sauce on your pork, try it with crab apple butter instead. Delish!

More Autumn Recipes

Butternut Squash Pie Recipe (better than pumpkin!)
Elderberry Syrup Recipe
Simple Blackberry Gin Recipe
Hedgerow Jelly Recipe

Crab Apple Butter Recipe

Tanya Anderson

A delicious and versatile preserve that you make with crab apples (or windfall apples), sweeter eating apples, brown sugar, and autumn spices. Serve it as you would other preserves on toast, crumpets, pancakes, yogurt, or desserts, or with holiday cheeseboards. Makes two pints, but the recipe may be scaled up.

5 from 3 votes

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Prep Time 30

Cook Time 1 15

Total Time 1 45

Course Preserves

Cuisine American, British

Servings pints

Calories 27 kcal

Equipment

Ingredients

To make the stewed apple puree

5.5 cups chopped eating apples (those with a sweet, crisp flavor like Granny Smith, Cortland, or Braeburn 680 g)
3 cups chopped crabapples (You can also use windfall apples, cooking apples, or flowering quince / 320 g)
4.25 cups apple juice (1 Liter)
4 allspice berries
4 cloves
3 cardamom pods (lightly crushed)

To make crab apple butter

1.75 cups dark brown sugar (packed / 400 g)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/16 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Prepare the apples

Clean and chop the apples into small pieces. Small crabapples only need halving, while larger apples need to be quartered. You can leave the skin, seeds, and cores as they'll be sieved out later.

Cook down the apples

Put the apples in a large pot with the apple juice and whole spices (not the ground ones, though) and bring it to a boil. Then, reduce the heat and keep it at a steady simmer until it's soft and pulpy. Stewing can take around 20-45 minutes*, and make sure to stir it regularly while it's cooking.
Put the pulp through a vegetable mill or fine sieve. This process removes the skin and seeds, creating a thin apple sauce.

Make Crab Apple Butter

Return it to the cleaned pan and stir in the dark brown sugar, ground spices, salt, and vanilla.
Bring the mixture to a simmer on medium-low heat, stirring regularly until the apple butter is very thick. Getting to this point can take thirty minutes or more.
You know it's finished if you draw a spoon through the mixture and it leaves a brief but clean path behind it at the bottom of the pan. Another sign is if the apple butter holds its form when scooped up with a spoon.
Pour the apple butter through a preserving funnel and into warmed and sterilized preserving jars. Tighten the lids immediately.
Water-bath the jars for ten minutes, then cool and store for up to a year in the kitchen cupboard.

Notes

Cooking times may vary depending on which type of apples you use. Crab apples and flowering quince are generally small and firm and take longer than cooking or eating apples.

Nutrition

Serving: 1TBSPCalories: 27kcalCarbohydrates: 7gProtein: 1gFat: 1gSaturated Fat: 1gPolyunsaturated Fat: 1gMonounsaturated Fat: 1gSodium: 1mgPotassium: 31mgFiber: 1gSugar: 6gVitamin A: 13IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 3mgIron: 1mg

Keyword apple

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