If you love southern cooking like I do, you’ll love my homemade apple butter recipe, complete with step-by step instructions. I worked really hard to make this tasty sauce with fewer calories so that I could stay within my Weight Watchers Daily Points range. And it turned out amazing! This is definitely a must try.

And for those of you who’ve never had it before, here’s a little background info… Apple butter is a highly concentrated form of apple sauce, produced by long, slow cooking of apples with cider or water to a point where the sugar in the apples caramelizes, turning the apple butter a deep brown.

The concentration of sugar gives apple butter a much longer shelf life as a preserve than applesauce. Apple butter was a popular way of using apples in colonial America, and well into the 19th century. The term “butter” refers to the thick, soft consistency, and apple butter’s use as a spread for breads.

Typically seasoned with cinnamon, cloves, lemon juice and other spices, apple butter may be spread on buttered toast, used as a side dish, an ingredient in baked goods, or as a condiment.