Wife just went through that. We had a few apples this year we did not want to go to waste and she usually pressure cans them. Then gives them away. We only had about five gallons this year of apples because the dry weather it kept aborting them. But I digress.

Bottom line we decided just to make apple butter rather than can them. Then she pressure canned the apple butter!

She did a bunch of on line searches. Basically what she came up with, for what you need to make apple butter is............apples. That's it. Nothing else needed. The concentrated sugar acts as the preservative. Now of course there are lots of additional ingredients that CAN be added. And if fact she added quite a bit of cinnamon and a little nutmeg. She wished she had added a little more cinnamon, as she likes cinnamon a lot.

In the end she ran out of time before needing to be elsewhere (making apple butter is a SLOW process) and what we ended up with was what I would call half way between applesauce and apple butter. The sugar had caramelized enough to turn the butter brown but it was not the really dark brown like commercial apple butter. At any rate it tasted good and since it was not fully caramelized to the degree desired just to be safe for long term storage she pressure canned it anyway just to be sure.

She added zero sugar because we are low carb eaters and apple butter is not on our menu. But we will keep a few jars for ourselves and use it sparingly and only occasionally. It is very tasty. Adding additional sugar will help with the caramelization and protection for long term storage if a person is not going to can it afterword.

This is coming from memory as wife is gone to retreat for a week. Don't believe anything I say as my backup to facts is gone. The cat is away and the mouse will play!