Pear Butter

Our pear tree has good years and bad years. It doesn't always know when spring is, and can bloom at the wrong time, resulting in unsuccessful fruit. But this year its early blooming worked out in its favor. It was able to hold onto a lot of fruit which got very large (compared to its usual size). So far, we have picked over 50 pounds of nice ones, from 8-16 ounces each.

A lot of the fruit have damage from birds or bugs or disease. They're edible, but you can't leave them out on the counter to get soft. They're good candidates for making pear sauce or pear butter. I tried a new recipe for pear butter this year and wanted to write it down so I can do it again the next time we have a big harvest.

Enough pears to fill an 8-quart pot, cut into pieces.
1/2 c water

Heat on stovetop, covered, on medium-high heat for 6 minutes. Stir and reduce heat to medium. Continue to cook, stirring every 10 minutes, until pears are breaking down and swimming in juice.

Optional: strain solids out of juice, and return the juice to the pan. In either case, mill the solids, discarding the skins.

To the juice (or all, if not separating), add:

1 1/2 c sugar
4 t Ceylon cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
1 t ground cardamom
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1/2 t ground cloves

Cook the juice down on medium-high heat until it's syrupy, then stir in the solids and continue to cook down. Use a spatter guard, but allow the steam to escape.

To avoid spatter burns, turn the heat way down before stirring with a silicone spatula, which you need to do every few minutes.