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Fresh Fruit Butter or Jam is a great addition to baby's food!

 

Fruits are easily reduced to butters and jams Share Tweet

 

Make some yummy fruit butter or jam to liven up baby food

What are Fruit Butters?

Fruit butters are very yummy, dense "buttery" versions of fruit sauces. These fruit offerings are great for babies, toddlers and everyone else in the family! You can make your own fruit butters or you can buy them from your local natural grocery store or "conventional" grocery store.

Read the Labels of Store-Bought Fruit Butters!

When buying fruit butters, you want to be sure to read the labels! You do not want to buy anything that has additives like the evil high fructose corn syrup, starches or other corn syrups. Check the labels to discern how much sugars are included and remember, it's up to you to decide if 1 teaspoon of a fruit butter mixed into something for your baby is ok.

One of my favorite brands is Trader Joe's pumpkin butter and apple butter! These fruit butters contain nothing but the fruit, water and natural sugar.


10 Ways to Serve Fruit Butters

You need only a small bit when mixing into other foods. Try 1 teaspoon first then add more if needed!

• Spread onto toast
  
• Stir into plain whole milk yogurt
  
• Add to a "disliked" food such as mixing into chicken or green beans (green beans? don't laugh, many babies and toddlers love green beans mixed with fruits!)
  
• Mix into a Baby Cereal Pancake recipe or a teething biscuit recipe
  
• Add fruit butter to squash or other soups such as cream of chicken
  
• Use as a dipping sauce for your older baby or toddler's snacks or other foods
  
• Add to warm cereals such as rice cereal, farnina or oatmeal
  
• Spread it on your toddler's homemade chicken nuggets prior to baking for a nice new flavour!
  
• Spread it onto flour tortillas or pitas, warm the tortilla or pita then cut into small finger food
  
• Mix some into your favorite smoothie (or milk shake) recipe! Banana Smoothies with a hint of apple or pumpkin butter are YUMMY!

 

Recipes for Fruit Butters

You can make these using only minimal sugar or no sugar at all (read our Sugar Substitutes in Baby Food) - it's up to you. Many parents may prefer to not use sugar if they want to mix homemade fruit butters into baby food. Sugar of course should not be added to any of baby's regular "meal" foods!

Apple Butter (Love this one!)

4 pounds Granny Smith or Macintosh apples, peeled, cored and quartered,
1 cup water
1 cup apple cider (due to cooking, this will be safe for baby!)
Brown sugar as needed
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon allspice
Grated rind and juice of 2 lemons

Cook the apples in the liquid until soft. Pass through a food mill (we just push it through a fine mesh strainer) and note how many cups you are getting. You do this so you can determine how much sugar you may/may not need. Add 1/2 cup brown sugar for each cup of puree - more or less to your taste. (we usually only add 3/4 cup to the whole recipe due to perfering a less sweet butter)

Add the spices, rind and lemon juice and cook over very low heat until thick and dark brown. This may take 3 to 4 hours. If not to be used within a week or two, pour into hot sterilized jars and seal tightly. You may also freeze this apple butter!

Pumpkin Butter

1 (29 ounce) can pumpkin puree (do NOT get the pumpkin pie mix in the can!) - or 3 cups homemade pumpkin puree
3/4 cup apple juice
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
brown sugar - to taste, 1/2 cup is a good start
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Combine pumpkin, apple juice, spices, and sugar in a large saucepan; stir well. Bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer for 1-2 minutes or until thickened. Stir frequently and check on frequently so that you do not want to burn this! It will stick to the pan and get scorched!

Or, toss it all in a crockpot and cook on low until a smooth "butter" is acheived.

 

Crock Pot Fruit Butter Recipe (http://www.mtnlaurel.com/Recipes/applebutter.htm)
This is also a great recipe and you may use any fruit you want!)

Peel and cut up into small pieces enough fruit to fill a quart canning jar 3 times (3 quarts)

4 cups sugar (way too much for me! I use 1/2 to 1 cup depending on the fruit)
1/3 cup juice so that the fruit doesn't initially stick to the bottom of pot.

For pears, try addding 1/3 cup orange juice to one batch and 1/3 cup pineapple juice to another. Apple cider is the best for apple butter. You can experiment for different flavors.

Optional Spices to add:
Apple butter is spiced with 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon you might want to add a little ginger or nutmeg also. You might even add a sprinkle of ground cloves.

Put fruit, sugar and juice into crock pot and turn it on high. I usually start mine about 8:00 at night and let it cook until I go to bed on high. Then I turn it down to low and let it cook all night. The amount of fruit mentioned above (3 quarts) is all my pot will hold with the sugar added. If your crock pot is larger, you might like to enlarge the proportions.

In the morning, there will probably be a lot of fluid that has come out as the fruit has cooked. Dip the fruit & liquid out by the cupfuls and place in a blender. Blend until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Be careful not to put too large a batch in the blender at one time and, because the mix is very hot, do not place the lid completely on the blender, but allow for steam to escape.

As you blend a couple of cups from the crock pot, place it in another large bowl. When you have blended all the contents of the crock pot, return mixture to crock pot. Cook on high with the lid off until the fruit butter is as thick as you want it to be. Place in clean, hot canning jars and place lid on immediately. Tighten jar lid. I place the jars upside down until they are completely cool to help them seal better with all the heat against the seal.