Slow Cooker Vanilla Bean Pear Butter
Pears have been on sale at my grocery store since about January.
They are also always as hard as rocks.
Surprisingly, my girls aren’t all that interested in eating rock-hard pears (who are these children?).
And yet, possibly because I’m an idiot, I keep buying them. When I looked in my fridge drawers on Tuesday, I had ten pears in there.
Time to make some pear butter, obviously.
I made some apple butter a year or two ago and it was fantastic – I loved it on toast (and I loved it even more on ice cream). It was a quick way to make a pancake or waffle pretty awesome.
Obviously, it was time to make a pear butter version.
slow cooker vanilla bean pear butter
Slow Cooker Vanilla Bean Pear Butter
A simple vanilla bean pear butter made in a slow cooker. Perfect for spreading on toast, pancakes, waffles or stirring into yogurt and ice cream.
Ingredients
- 6 pears peeled, cored, and sliced (I ran mine through the food processor to speed up the slicing)
- 3/4 cup brown sugar I used dark brown sugar
- 1/4 cup water
- 2 Tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 vanilla bean sliced open
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/8 teaspoons ground nutmeg
Instructions
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Put all ingredients in the slow cooker, stir, and cook on low for 3-4 hours, until the pears are tender.
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Blend the mixture until smooth (I used an immersion blender, but you can put it in a regular blender or a food processor too).
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Return the mixture to the slow cooker, turn it up on high and cook until thick, about 6-8 more hours. Remove the vanilla bean and cinnamon stick, and spoon into a jar or other resealable container.
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(I'm sure you could can this, but I know nothing about canning. So I just eat mine before it goes bad - it should last about two weeks in the fridge).
Oh this sounds delicious. Next time I buy pears!
this looks AMAZING. I have a guilt-inducing pear-rock collection growing myself…can't wait to break out the crockpot and banish the guilt (and empty my produce drawer/pear collector!)
My Mom would make and can pear butter every year, and it is my all-time favorite topping. Yum, yum, yum! Of course, my recipe is for vats of pear butter, glad you have scaled this down so nicely for me! 🙂
xox
This gives me an idea for the gazillions of sliced apples in baggies that Eric brings home from school. (The ones his students don't eat and my kids generally won't eat either.) I just used 7 baggies to make horse muffins (named such because the main ingredients are carrots, apples, and oats). I still have 8 baggies left.
I can only imagine how great this smelled while you were making it. One of these days I want to get around to making plum jelly. My grandmother used to make it, and it smelled/tasted heavenly.
This sounds so good! I'm definitely going to try it.