Step 1

Prepare the fruit:•For cherries, clean and pit the cherries. •For peaches, you have to peel and pit the fruit. There's no way around it. To easily peel peaches, submerge them into a pot of boiling water for ten to fifteen seconds, then plunge them into ice water until they're cold again. The peels should just slip off. Quarter the peaches. •For pears, clean and core the fruit. If you want to peel the pears, you can use the whole quarters and overfill the pot. If you don't want to peel the pears, quarter and core them.•For blueberries, you can use whole.

Step 2

Fill a 6-quart CrockPot or an 8-10 quart stock pot with prepared fruit. I heap the fruit up a little above the pan because it will cook down quite a bit. Pour an inch or two of water or no-sugar-added apple juice in the pot, and cook the fruit. On the stove top, cook the fruit for a half hour or so on high (or the highest heat you can use for your pot).In the Crock Pot, cook the fruit on high for about three hours.

Step 3

Take the cooked fruit out of the pan and run it through a vegetable grinder/strainer, food mill, or blender. It should be relatively smooth and thick.

Step 4

Put the fruit back into the pan. Add the sugar or sweetener to taste. Some people like to add spices like cinnamon and cloves now, too. I don't.

Step 5

Cook the fruit on low, stirring often (though not continuously). It will take another half hour or longer on the stove (two to three hours in the Crock Pot) until it is a rich brown and a nice, thick consistency. Be careful that it doesn't turn black and burn; that will ruin the whole batch.

Step 6

If your fruit butter gets too thick, you can either put it in the blender or thin it with a bit of water or apple juice. I haven't had this problem with fruit butters, but it can happen.

Step 7

If you can the fruit butter in sterile jars, it will last almost forever. In the freezer, you can keep apple butter for six months to a year. In the refrigerator, it will stay good for about a month.