Let the slow cooker do the tending

There is something steadying about a recipe that asks for 5 minutes of your hands and then a whole night of patience. You chop, you walk away, and by morning your kitchen smells like spiced fruit and the work is done. This cran-apple butter is a tart twist on the usual apple butter, good on a salad, alongside meat, or spooned over a simple dessert. Apples and cranberries are a source of vitamin C and soluble fiber, and apples carry pectin, the fiber that gives this spread its body and gently supports the gut as it passes through. Cinnamon and ginger are warming aromatics long valued for digestion, and the honey here is used in a modest quarter cup across the whole batch, more background sweetness than a sweetener in its own right. This makes a big batch, which is the point. Keep some in the fridge, freeze the rest, and give a jar to someone you love. There is a real gladness in a spread made of nothing but fruit, honey, and spice, food that asks nothing of the body it cannot give back.

Ingredients

• 7 apples, peeled, cored, and chopped
• 2 cups cranberries
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground mace
• sea salt, to taste Note: the source frets that mace is seed-based and questions it for strict elimination, but mace is permitted in ARM, so it stays.

Method

• Add the apples, cranberries, honey, cinnamon, ginger, mace, and a pinch of sea salt to the slow cooker.
• Cook on low for 10 to 12 hours, stirring occasionally whenever you pass by. The fruit will collapse and darken.
• Blend the softened mixture smooth, in the cooker with an immersion blender or in batches in a stand blender.
• Cool, then refrigerate. It freezes well, use thawed portions within 3 to 5 days. ### Instant Pot variation This works in the Instant Pot. Add all the ingredients, pressure cook, then simmer it down on the saute setting until it thickens to a spreadable butter, stirring so it does not catch. Blend smooth as above. The exact pressure and reduction time is untested here, watch the texture rather than the clock. *Adapted from a-clean-plate*