Apples to Apple Butter

Someone told of a store here that had a special this past week on apples. Special like $.47 for a pound of apples. How could I resist? The next day Eirena and I headed over there and I loaded up a bag with apples. I thought it was a nice sized bag, but not a crazy amount. I took it to the cashier. She looked at me wide-eyed and asked what I was going to do with all of these apples. I said, "Make apple butter". (I then looked at my receipt and discovered I had bought 9+ lb of apples!)

Anyway, so I did in fact make apple butter over the weekend. (I already about 3lbs of apples at home, I used 4 lbs for the apple butter, so that leaves me with... ~8 lbs of apples still in my fridge.--Did I just embarrass myself with my lack of math skills?)

Back to the apple butter. I vaguely followed a recipe I found online.
This is what I did:
~4lbs of apples, cored & chopped
1/2 gallon of water
Cook until you get tender apples.
*The recipe said to core the apples, but then cook them in apple cider. Since I didn't have cider and couldn't bear to trash all the peels, I left the peels on and cooked them in water. The recipe also said that the water should just cover the apples. I think it was too much water. Maybe 1/2 that amount and just stirring a few times to get all the apples cooked would be better.

After the apples are tender puree them in the blender. Put them back in the pot, bring to a simmer. Slowly add ~1/2 c. sugar per lb of apples, 2 t. cinnamon, 1 t. clove and some crushed allspice (the allspice was my own idea), as well as the juice of one lemon. Then you just let it simmer away until it is thicker than applesauce and spreadable.
*Because I followed the recipe for the amount of water, it took several hours for the butter to reduce. Normally I think it is only supposed to take 1-2hrs.
*You want to stir occasionally to make sure it isn't sticking to the bottom of the pot.
I think I probably got close to 50 oz out of this recipe. (And little tasting experts think it is palatable!)