Cider apple butter, cooked down in fresh cider with no spice jar anywhere near it.
Apple butter for Austin kitchens that want the apple and nothing else. We reduce apples in fresh cider until the pan goes dark brown and a spoon leaves a trench. No cinnamon, no clove, no pumpkin-spice blend. It is the cheapest jar we make.
An estimate, not a quote. We confirm the price by phone or email before anything is made.
- Fruit
- Apples, peeled and cored, plus fresh unfiltered cider
- Sugar
- About 1 part to 5 parts fruit by weight
- Spice
- None. A strip of lemon peel in the pan, removed before jarring
- Set
- Smooth, spreadable, holds a ridge on a knife
- Sizes
- 8 oz jar, 16 oz jar, 2 lb tub, 5 lb pail
- Season
- Year round, batch sizes vary with the fruit we can get
The cheapest jar in the range, and the reason is the fruit, not a shortcut.
Apples are the one fruit we can buy every month of the year at a sane price. Plums and damsons cost more per pound and lose more weight to pits and skins. Sour cherries have to be pitted one by one. Apples peel and core by hand in a fraction of the time. That is why the cider apple butter starts at $10 an 8 oz jar while the damson starts at $13.
The method is not cheaper. The cider goes into the wide pan first and boils down by roughly two thirds before a single apple joins it. Then the apples go in, soften, get pushed through a food mill and go back on the heat. From there it is the same slow scraping as the plum lekvar, just shorter, until the color moves from gold to a deep brown that looks like strong tea held to a window.
Most apple butter sold in Texas is apple sauce with cinnamon and a lot of sugar. You taste the spice first, then the sweetness, then maybe an apple somewhere in the back. We wanted the order reversed. Cider gives a second layer of apple and enough acid that the butter does not need much sugar to stay bright.
Cider first, apples second, sugar a distant third. You taste the apple before anything else.
Our lekvars run about 1:4. The apple butter sits a little lower, close to 1:5, because cider brings natural sugar of its own.
Where cider apple butter earns its place
It is a breakfast jar first. It also turns up in the oven and next to pork more often than people expect.
Split buttermilk biscuits
The obvious one. Warm biscuit, cold butter, a thick layer of this on top. It does not soak into the crumb and vanish.
Pork chops and roast pork
A spoonful loosened with a splash of pan juice makes a glaze in two minutes. The cider acid cuts the fat.
Hand pies and turnovers
Dense enough to stay inside a crimped edge at 375°F. Mix with chopped fresh apple if you want texture.
Sharp cheddar
On a cracker with aged cheddar. It does the job a chutney does, with less vinegar.
Oatmeal and yogurt
Stirred in cold. If you prefer cardamom with breakfast, the pear cardamom butter is the softer choice.
Four sizes, one price rule
Every size is worked out from the 8 oz band of $10 to $12. The multipliers are the same ones our price estimator uses, so the figure you see there matches the one we start from on the phone.
Six units or more drop the band by 8%, 24 or more by 14%, 72 or more by 20%. Austin delivery is a flat $8 per order. These are estimates, not quotes.
Questions people ask about apple butter
Why is there no cinnamon in it?
Because the cider already tastes of apple and a spice mix covers that up. If you want cinnamon, stir a pinch into the jar you have open. We would rather you add it than have to scrape it out.
Is apple butter the same as apple sauce?
No. Apple butter is cooked far longer, until most of the water is gone and the sugars darken. It spreads like soft butter and does not slide off a biscuit. Apple sauce would run off a spoon held sideways. If it runs off a spoon held sideways, it is not finished.
Can I bake with it?
Yes. It holds in hand pies, turnovers and as a layer in bars. For kolaches the plum lekvar is the better choice because it is denser and was built for that oven. Bakeries buying tubs should read the notes for bakers.
Who is this jar not for?
Anyone who wants the warm spiced apple butter of a holiday market. It is a good thing, just not ours. And anyone outside Texas: we hand over in Austin and nowhere else.
Ask for cider apple butter
One of the three of us answers every inquiry. Nothing is paid on this site.
Other jars you might want alongside: blackberry jam, fig and orange jam, or the whole catalogue.