Slow Cooker Vanilla Caramel Pear Butter
Posted on 04 October 2013
It’s October, the best month of the year! That means it’s slow cooker month!
J’adore the slow cooker. Frankly, I’m not sure why I don’t use it more often. Typical recipes made in the slow cooker are perfect when it’s chilly outside, but it’s also practical when it’s oppressively hot since cooking doesn’t heat up the kitchen.
But you know that I am a little crazy (cray-cray, if you will) for using the slow cooker to make fruit butters. Having been burned a lot by burbling fruit butters on the stove, I am willing — nay, eager — to endure the lengthy burn-free cooking times of slow-cooker fruit butters.
Last year for Can It Up, October brought what is possibly the most popular AFB recipe of all-time: Slow Cooker Vanilla Rum Apple Butter. This year, I adapted a different recipe for pears.
Have you ever heard of Warren pears? I hadn’t until this past weekend, but they may now be my favorite fall fruit. They are smooth, sweet, and buttery, unlike the gritty supermarket pears with which I was raised. Although I used uglies for this recipe (because you know I like a good deal), the bulk ended up being Warrens.
As the pear butter cooked down, Matt (a.k.a. Mr. Taste Tester) inquired what type of alcohol was included. The answer? None. The brown sugar caramelizes, thereby lending the pear butter a lightly toasted flavor with rummy overtones — but rum-free.
That means this preserve is perfect to share with your friends and family with children or those who otherwise appreciate booziness without the actual booze. Hooray!
What is your favorite fall fruit?
Last year: Slow Cooker Triple Chocolate Brownies
Ingredients
Instructions
Adapted from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
70 responses to Slow Cooker Vanilla Caramel Pear Butter
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Have you tried freezing this or other pear butter? If so, what were the results?
Thanks!
ldp
I didn’t have any lemon juice, so i’m using orange juice (it just has to be citrus right?)I’ll let you know how it turns out!
Laura, I also have only orange juice so I was wondering how this recipe turned out for you. Please review! Thanks.
I tried this recipe and it was awesome. I recommend it for anyone. I made a small recipe because I only had a few pears. When we tried it, I had to make more! What a treat to have. It is sweet, which is just how it should be, with a smooth caramel taste. This would be a good gift to share; if you can spare some. Ha!
Thanks so much for this recipe!
[…] Slow Cooker Vanilla Pear Butter […]
Great recipe! I ordered a big box of pears and canned some halves, but I needed something to do with the rest as they were getting pretty ripe and some of them had cosmetic issues since they were organic. I used what I had which ended up being about 1 3/4 recipes, I scaled according to the amount of puree I had and it turned out great. I think my butter wasn’t as thick as intended, even though I cooked it for the amount of time you suggested. It’s the consistency of a typical low-sugar jam and is amazing on toast, in a sweet-savory sandwich with bacon, or eaten on crackers with hard cheese. The yield I got was 5.5 pints and I canned it in a mix of pint and half pint jars.
How odd! This recipe sounded so delicious, I had to try it with the pears from my tree – plain ol’ Bartlett-type. I put the pears in salt water while peeling, etc., then added the lemon juice and cooked 6 hours, then sugar and cooked overnight and added vanilla in the morning. I was really disappointed. The butter was really salty (too much salt in the water I guess!) and not a hint of the yummy taste of the raw fruit, and also, no caramel taste either! I’ve been doctoring it up since to try to save it, but I still don’t know what I did wrong! Any ideas?
It looks like you didn’t follow the recipe. It doesn’t call for any salt, and based on what you wrote, it was seriously over-cooked 🙁
Well, I didn’t add any salt, just used salt water to keep the pears from turning brown while I finished peeling them. If you don’t use salt water, how do you do it? (other than “Fruit Fresh”) Also, short of cooking longer, how do you get it to thicken?
Lemon juice keeps the pears from browning. Before adding liquid, you should be able to tell how juicy the pears are and calibrate the water added accordingly. But before altering this or any other recipe, follow it to the letter first; then, you can make any changes.
Hi Tika, since you didn’t follow the recipe exactly, it’s tough to troubleshoot what happened to your batch. I’ve made this repeatedly using the exact recipe to rave reviews.
This was absolutely delicious. I made them as Christmas gifts and loved it so much that I plan on making more for myself~!!
Mechelle, yay!
This sounds wonderful! I was wondering if it would work with stevia instead of real sugar?
Jennifer, I’ve never canned using stevia so I’m not sure how it would turn out. The sugar helps with the preservation.
Had pears that my hubby purchased from a charity drive. They were getting really ripe. So surfing thru recipes,I came to your site. I followed the recipe exactly, it is presently in the crock-pot now. It smells and tastes really great. I am going to use it as extra giveaways at Christmas. I will Preserve the butter with my caner, a decorative cloth and bow. Thanks
Linda, enjoy!
I had some pears from Christmas ripening quickly and stumbled on to this recipe. Came out amazing, but I added some personal touches. I added 1 cup of dried cranberries (which plumped up very nicely while cooking), cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice. I also threw in a few ripening apples I had lying around. The end result was very smooth with a nice textural difference of the cranberries and a more complex flavor with the spices. This recipe lends to all sorts of yummy variations and super easy!
Hi Ann, that’s what’s so great about fruit butters…so much flexibility!
What setting did you use on the slow cooker?