Rinse your apples and discard any bad ones; pull off stems.

You can pare your apples if you wish; I don't pare the Transparent/Lodi apples, but be aware that if you use red apples, keeping the peel can turn your butter slightly pink.  If you do pare your apples, use a hand cranked apple peeler/corer. You don't need to core the apples.

Chop or quarter the apples and place them in a heavy Dutch oven or large pot with some apple cider, apple juice or water (enough to help the apples cook and keep them from sticking).

Cook apples until they become tender and allow to cool somewhat.

Place apples in a foley food mill over a large mixing bowl and crank it until the apple pulp is pureed. Discard any remaining solids in the mill. You may need to do this several times, removing the solids so they don't jam the mill. (Congratulations. You just made apple sauce!)

Place the sauce back into the pot and stir in the spices and sugar.

Cook/ simmer the apple sauce over low heat, stirring frequently, more as it thickens (it will begin to spit like lava from a volcano) and covering with a splatter screen as it gets thick. I do mine for about 2 hours. Yours may get done sooner or take longer. This will produce a velvety, non-runny apple butter.

(When the apple butter can mound on top of a teaspoon, it is thick enough to can)

If you do not wish to can, you can either refrigerate or freeze the apple butter.

Heat enough water in your water bath canner to cover the canning jars by at least one inch. Heat it to very hot, but not quite boiling.

Place the funnel on top of a canning jar and ladle in enough butter until you have a half inch of room (head space) to the top of the jar. Wipe off any spillage from the rim before adding the lid.

Use the magnetic wand to put the lid onto the jar, then place the band/ring on the jar and tighten it up.

Repeat with more jars until you have enough to fill the canner (don't overfill the canner as jars bumping together while being processed are more likely to break).

Using the jar lifter, lower the jars into the hot water, making sure they are covered with an inch of water.

Increase the heat on the canner and when it reaches a rolling boil, time your jars being processed. Watch the heat and turn it down just a touch to keep water from boiling over.

Use the canning time suggested for your elevation. See chart in the blog post.

Once the processing is finished, remove the jars carefully from the canner and place onto a towel, and blot up any excess water.

Allow the jars to cool. If they have sealed properly, the raised area on the lid will disappear and you will not be able to push it down with your finger. You may also hear it ping as well, but sometimes you may not hear it. All properly sealed jars may have the bands removed at this point, as they are not necessary, but you may opt to keep it on there to protect the lid from accidentally being pried off. Any jars which have not properly sealed must be reprocessed or refrigerated. Store properly sealed apple butter in a cool dry place.

Makes 2-1/2 pints.