Homemade Apple Butter

According to Wikipedia, apple butter is popular in America, and dates to the colonial times. The idea of apple butter and the process of cooking down fruits has been around for even longer.  It is an especially southern dish, and some places even hold apple butter festivals. 

Angie and I had our own apple festival in her kitchen. We used apples she kept in her freezer (when they started going bad) and a few from her counter that were starting to whither.

First we peeled and chopped up the apples. We cut the bad spots off and added them to a trash bowl of cores and peels. Some of the apple peels were eaten instead of being trashed.  We also considered starting a compost pile.

 We boiled jars to sterilize them. I asked Angie why she had a wire basket in her pot. She told me it helps to get the jars out when they are done sterilizing.

We put the apples into a pot and added cups of apple juice. The apple juice is from Kroger. As I was buying the juice, a considerate man told me that the news recently exposed that 100% juice does not necessarily mean it is 100% juice. It may be 5-10 % less than what it says. I told him we were using it to make apple butter, so I didn't think it mattered. He agreed. Nonetheless, I thanked him for the information.

Measuring the questionable apple juice.

Giving the apples a juice bath.

 We heated them for a bit, and then strained the mix. We did some apple mashing into the strainer.

Pouring apples

The apples have soaked up some of the juice

Mashing the apples with a whisk.

 Then of course add sugar! We added two cups to a heating pot.

Sugar shower

Cover the apples!

 Then we added some delicious smelling spices! We cooked it for about an hour, stirring frequently. The smell filled the house as it cooked! Who needs home fragrances when you can make this delectable spread?

Mixing and smelling something heavenly

 We spooned the mix into the sterilized jars and secured the lids. The jars returned to the boiling water pot for further sealing.

Unfortunately, we only made two jars. Alex (hubby) and I have eaten it every morning on toast with our breakfast! This stuff tastes amazing! Next time we plan to buy apples on sale and make even more!

The recipe came from on of Angie's cookbooks. I'm not sure there is an online version for me to provide the link. That means if you want to know how to make it, you'll have to join us next time!

Another Wikipedia fact: Apple butter has no actual butter in it. The only reason why it is called "butter" is because of the texture and consistency of the spread. 

Paper Flowers

Sorry, we took a little break. Both ladies in this blog are now expecting, and have been dealing with this excitement. Here is the one project we have accomplished. It's super-easy. You should try it. Here is the original tutorial. I'm not sure if we used this one, but I forgot to save the link, so I googled "Paper Flowers" and chose this link.

1) Find or cut a small piece or card stock and begin drawing one continuous, dizzying line

2) This is what the paper should look like. You can skip these steps, but it is easier to follow a line.

3) Cut along the line. Also, make sure that the outer edge is round, not square.

4) You get a cute swirly paper that could probably be used as a decoration at this step. SEE? Even though we left everyone hanging for a few weeks, we gave you TWO crafts in one. Your welcome ;)

5) All you do at this step is start rolling up the paper. My cousin used to have ribbon with her all the time and would constantly roll it and unroll it. OCD  maybe, but this is the idea with the paper. Just don't unroll it.

6) When you are done, let go! What should happen is that you will have a loose rolled up paper that looks like a rose. 

7) Make more! As you can see, we mostly used solid-colored card stock, but I also tried a couple with some printed paper. Printed paper is a bit flimsy, and would be more interesting with colors on both sides.

Ideas for use: 

• Put on wrapped present instead of bows
• Attach to small short (or tall) branches and use for home, party, or deck decor.

Those are the only two ideas that we came up with so far. There are probably more-feel free to use you imagination!

Shrug

Yet again  from Pinterest, we found the idea to turn a regular t-shirt into a shrug.I think that's a funny idea for a name....turning a verb (shrug) into a name for something you wear on your shoulders...

Anyways.

The original website for the shrug is here.http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/tshirt_shrug

Angie and I first adventured to Hobby Lobby to find ribbon/rope with which to tie the shrug, and thread to match the t-shirts. Success!

Red=Angie   Blue=Calista

We borrowed these super-awesome sharp scissors from Angie's mother-in-law. We though about "losing" them, but then decided that wouldn't be the nice thing to do.

We then used said amazing scissors to cut the t-shirt according to the directions: around the collar and down the middle of the front of the t-shirt.

Then fold the t-shirt over about an inch and pin all around. The corner can be however you decide: you don't really see the corner in the end product anyways. Also, it helps to pin your pins in the same direction all the way around to make sewing easier.

Then sew! Angie brought her sewing machine over to my (Calista's) apartment, and taught me how to sew. I did sew a looooooong time ago, but it was pajama pants with slinky material, and I ended up in tears. This, thankfully, was much more productive.

Sewing along the edge.

Keep it steady

The bobbin 

The above picture was super fun for me! Bobbin=another fun word to say. The thread needs to me even, so I needed to keep the thread going up and down while pushing the petal. Finally, I was starting to get along with the sewing machine!

Threading the needle.

We did have a few issues with the thread breaking, but Angie fixed it patiently. We sewed along the inch margins for both of our t-shirts. This is called "casing" according to the site.

Next, we pulled/threaded our our ribbon/rope through the newly sewed casing. Angie was able to pull hers through pretty easily. We ended up needing a safety pin to get mine through.

Finished!

I really like the angle of this picture (good job Angie!)

This was an inexpensive (Angie already had the t-shirts) and quick job. We finished it in an afternoon. Here we are with our cool "new" shrugs!

On the website, you can post your version of the shrug. I'd love to hear if anyone tries this one!

Strawberry Fields

Welcome to our next project! Yet again inspired by food, we embarked on a mini-pie journey. We used some of Angie's frozen strawberries that she had hand-picked during a previous summer!

We found the picture on Pinterest, and the recipe came from Cooking with my Kid.



Ingredients



Here is our list of ingredients. We decided to use a bag of frozen strawberries from the store for our picture, because it was a pretty bag. We did use the hand-picked stawberries for our recipe.

 

Rolling out the dough

While the strawberries thaw, cover them in the sugar.

The original recipe calls for already-made dough, but we didn't have any. Angie used her awesome pie-making skills to make a pie crust that she had for some time. She used to make pies and sell them!

Cut the pie dour into circles slightly larger than your muffin tin. Then put them into the muffin tins, pushing out all the bubbles.

The recipe also called for apple pie spice, but again, we didn't have any. Thanks to Allrecipes for helping us out!

Then put the "filler" ingredients in the food processor....because it is easier to mix in the butter that way...

We put the sugar-coated strawberries into the mini-pie crusts, and then covered them in the filler.

45 minutes later, out came mini strawberry pies! They did need to cool completely, and easily fell apart, but they were delicious! Angie's husband suggested that nest time we mash up strawberries, but both our husbands enjoyed them!

 

Chocolate Love: Brownie Cookies!

Welcome to our first adventure! Of course we let our taste buds guide this decision. The idea of mixing the brownie and cookie flavors was just too much to pass up. Our recipe came from here, but we used butter instead of shortening, and omitted the water. Here's our step by step process:

Ingredients list. The vanilla is hiding!

Mixing butter and sugars.

Spoon stirring dry  ingredients

Calista had to make sure the chocolate chips still tasted good.

Dry on the outside, mushy on the inside...kinda like some people...

Nice and smooth mixture

Adding some chocolate chips...Calista decided they were still good.

Everything is mixed up just right!

So of course we had to try it

Dropping by spoonfuls.

Cookies after and before.

Super cute kid enjoying his cookie.

Why is the cookie gone??

This was definitely a success! We enjoyed our delicacies while discussing more ideas for our next post. Stay tuned for our next post! We may not actually post anything until the end of February, as this next week has some vacation time for this blogger!