Honey Apple Butter

Learn how to make perfect apple butter in the slow cooker! Made with five ingredients, this recipe is easy, delicious, and much better than store-bought.

What is Apple Butter?

Apple butter is a sweet, silky spread made with slow-cooked apples and spices. Think applesauce, but thicker and much more concentrated. It’s similar to the consistency of jam with a rich and intense apple flavor. Use apple butter to spread onto toast and biscuits, or use it as a topping for pancakes, waffles, and oatmeal.

Apple Butter Recipe Ingredients

You only need five ingredients to make this recipe, here’s an explanation and tips:

• Apples! – You can’t make apple butter without a bunch of fresh apples. We’ll need 8 to 9 medium apples for this recipe. We typically reach for crisp apples when making apple butter (just like when we make applesauce or apple pie). Honeycrisp, Gala, Fuji, and Pink Lady apples are all great options. More tart apples, like Granny Smith, are also excellent in this recipe.
• Brown sugar – Since we are looking for a concentrated jam-like quality for our apple butter, we need some sugar. Brown sugar keeps things sweet and adds a caramelized note, too.
• Honey – I love the floral notes honey adds to this apple butter. If you prefer to make vegan apple butter, use maple syrup as a substitute.
• Hard apple cider – Here’s where our recipe is a bit different from other apple butter recipes we have seen online. Hard apple cider adds extra flavor and a bit of bitterness, which is so delicious when matched with the sweet apples, sugar, and honey. If you’d prefer to leave this out, we have suggestions in the recipe tips section below. Use one you enjoy as the flavors will concentrate as it cooks.
• Chinese Five Spice – Apples and warm spices like cinnamon were meant for each other (especially in the Fall!). You can use cinnamon in our recipe, but for a bit more spice and flavor, use Chinese Five Spice, which is a blend of Chinese cinnamon, star anise, cloves, Sichuan (Szechuan) peppercorns, and fennel. Pumpkin pie spice is also an excellent idea.

Find the complete recipe with measurements below.

How to Make Apple Butter

First, prepare your apples. Core and chop them. There is no need to peel apples when you make apple butter. The peel adds color and flavor. Then, combine the apples with brown sugar and Chinese five spice. I like to toss them well in a large bowl.

This is a crockpot apple butter so, add the sugar and spiced apples to your slow cooker (ours is a 6-quart model, but smaller models should also work). Pour the honey and hard apple cider around the apples, then give everything a good stir.

Cover the slow cooker and cook on LOW for 10 hours. By simmering the apples over very low heat, they almost melt into themselves, making the apple butter extra silky.

After 10 hours, the apples are soft and cooked down. Uncover the slow cooker, turn to HIGH heat, and cook, with the lid left off, for 2 hours. This step helps to concentrate the apples even more and ensures a thick, spreadable apple butter.

Finally, blend! We use an immersion blender in the slow cooker, but you can always transfer the apples (and any juices) to a blender and blend there.

Note that you might like the consistency to be thicker after blending. If this is the case, place the pureed mixture back into the slow cooker and cook, uncovered on HIGH, for another 30 minutes to an hour. Or use the stovetop. We have provided notes in the tip section of the recipe. (Remember that apple butter thickens a bit when cooled.)

How to Use Homemade Apple Butter

This slow cooker apple butter is delicious spread onto toast, but the ways to eat it don’t end there. Here are a few more ideas to get you started:

• Spread onto muffins, bagels, or homemade biscuits.
• Swirl it into yogurt, overnight oats, or use it to top your oatmeal in the morning.
• Add a spoonful to pancakes, waffles, or French toast. I especially love it with these pumpkin pancakes.
• Use it as a glaze for pork tenderloin, pork chops, chicken, or roasted carrots.