Pumpkin Butter Recipe
This pumpkin butter recipe will take you right back to that elementary field trip to the apple orchard, but without the refined sugar. The slow cooker makes this recipe easy-breezy!
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Pumpkin Butter Recipe
- 🕰️ Prep Time: 5 minutes
- ⏰ Cook Time: 3 hours in the slow cooker
- 🍁 Flavor Profile: Sweet, spiced, and perfectly creamy.
- 🥄 Good For: Swirling into breakfasts, spreading on toast, shaking into cocktails, or filling overnight cinnamon rolls.
- 🧡 Difficulty: The slow cooker makes this easy to set-it-and-forget-it.
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🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
I clearly remember the first time I saw pumpkin butter. I was in elementary school, and we were on our yearly field trip to a local apple orchard. My parents had given me a crisp five dollar bill to buy something from the gift store there, and while the other kids had gravitated to the cookies, coloring books, and little plastic toys with their allowance, something more culinary caught my eye-pumpkin butter!
I'd had homemade apple butter before, but pumpkin butter was a mystical, magical thing I'd never heard of, and I was too intrigued to pass it up. I handed over my five dollars and a life-long love affair with pumpkin butter was born!
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- Incredibly easy: It wasn't until just a few years back that I realized how easy it is to make pumpkin butter at home (and for a heck of a lot cheaper than five dollars a jar). In fact, this recipe is so easy that your slow cooker does all the work for you. Just put all the ingredients into your slow cooker, set it, and forget it. After a few hours, out comes pumpkin butter that is perfectly creamy and ready to be slathered onto toast, healthy pumpkin bread, or easy drop biscuits.
- Flexible and forgiving: Make it in the slow cooker, Instant Pot, or stovetop. Sweeten it with maple syrup, white sugar, or brown sugar. You can easily customize this pumpkin butter recipe to your tastes (just don't go to heavy on the spices-trust me!).
- Endlessly versatile: You will never run out of ways to use pumpkin butter. I love it in my coconut yogurt recipe, slathered onto whole wheat pumpkin waffles, sandwiched into a grilled cheese...but there are millions of uses!
🎃 The Ingredients You Need
- Maple syrup: I'm sure my original jar of pumpkin butter contained both white sugar and brown sugar, but since I eat SO much pumpkin butter in the fall (it's impressive, really), I instead focused here on more natural sugars like maple syrup. It turned out to be a wonderful decision because adding maple syrup gives the pumpkin butter another level of flavor that is absolutely incredible!
- Apple cider: I also add sweetness by adding pure, unsweetened apple cider (not juice) to the mixture. You'll never miss the brown sugar.
- Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves: Getting a perfect pumpkin spice flavor can be tricky, mostly because just a touch too much cloves or nutmeg can take a dish from pumpkin-tastic to inedible! The first time I tested this recipe, I used way too much cloves (which overpowers almost everything) and way too much nutmeg (which can taste soapy if you use too much, especially when using freshly ground, which I always recommended you do). Combine this with the fact that all the spices intensify during the long cooking time in the slow cooker, and I ended up with a totally inedible pumpkin butter! It took a few tries to land on the right combination. .
- Pumpkin puree: Using canned pumpkin is easiest (and will give you great results), but making pumpkin puree at home will up the flavor of this pumpkin butter even more!
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Instant Pot doubles as a slow cooker: Most electric pressure cookers have a slow cooker setting, which turns the pressure cooker into a perfectly-sized slow cooker for making pumpkin butter. In fact, I find myself using my Instant Pot as a slow cooker more than I use my actual slow cooker!
- Make it on the stovetop: Don't have a slow cooker on hand? No worries. You can make this pumpkin butter on the stovetop as well, it just requires a bit more babysitting than the slow cooker would. I've included full stovetop directions in the printable recipe down below.
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🥣 How to Make This Pumpkin Butter Recipe
Step 1: Combine everything in the basin of a slow cooker. Leave the lid slightly ajar so steam can escape...without it, the pumpkin butter will be watery and thin.
Step 2: Cook on low for 4-5 hours (or high for 2-3), giving it a good stir every 30 minutes or so. When your kitchen smells entirely like pumpkin spice, your pumpkin butter is done. Give it a taste and add more syrup or spices if needed.
🙋🏻♀️ Pumpkin Butter Recipe FAQs
Technically, pumpkin butter will last in the fridge in an airtight container (I love a mason jar!) for up to two weeks...but mine rarely makes it that far.
Freezing is the only safe way to preserve pumpkin butter-there unfortunately isn't a pumpkin butter recipe out there that is safe for home canning. I recommend freezing the jars without the lid on to allow for expansion, and adding the lid once the pumpkin butter is frozen through.
Sure can! If you're worried about it dissolving properly, try this pumpkin spice syrup recipe instead-it is made for coffee drinks like homemade pumpkin spice lattes!
👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- A light hand on spices: You might see the small amount of cloves listed in the recipe below and be tempted to up it, but promise me you'll try it as listed first! You can always add more spices at the end of cooking if you find it needs a bit more to be to your liking, but you can't take them back out.
- Grind your nutmeg fresh: Nutmeg is one of those spices that loses flavor incredibly quickly. Instead of having a jar of pre-ground nutmeg that you only use a few months out of the year, buy nutmeg whole and use a spice grater or a zester to grind as much as you need each time you use it.
- Skip the pre-blended pumpkin pie spice: A lot of stores carry pre-blended pumpkin pie spice, which is great for a lot of uses, but here, it tends to get WAY too strong once the cooking time is up. This is a recipe that needs you to measure out each spice individually.
- Feel free to adjust the sweetness: Play with how much sweetness you like in your pumpkin butter by adding more or less maple syrup. The recipe below makes for a medium-sweet pumpkin butter that is slightly less sweet than the store-bought kind.
- Save your seeds: If you do make your own homemade pumpkin puree for this recipe, make sure to save those seeds to roast homemade pumpkin seeds. Isn't it amazing how much goodness you can get from just one pumpkin?
🍂 What to Use Pumpkin Butter For
So you've got yourself a beautiful jar of creamy, rich pumpkin butter. Now what in the heck do you do with it? Here are some of my favorite ways to use pumpkin butter:
- On toast or English muffins, especially when combined with goat cheese.
- On top of easy drop biscuits with butter.
- Swirled into a bowl of oatmeal.
- Swirled into a bowl of store-bought or homemade yogurt.
- In a cocktail (it sweetens and adds flavor).
- Slathered onto french toast, pumpkin waffles, or almond pancakes.
- As a pizza sauce (TRUST ME), combined with red onion, blue cheese, and bacon.
- In the middle of a grilled cheese (especially if that cheese is brie).
- As a dip for apple slices.
- Spread onto my whole wheat pumpkin bread for double the pumpkin!
- As a topper for cheesecake.
- As the filling inside make-ahead cinnamon rolls.
- With a spoon (because YUM).
🍁 More Pumpkin Recipes
If you tried this pumpkin butter recipe or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Pumpkin Butter
Ingredients
- 3 ½ cups pumpkin puree 2 15-ounce cans worth
- ⅔ cup unsweetened apple cider
- ½ cup maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
- ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
Instructions
- In the basin of the slow cooker, stir together all ingredients until well-mixed. Cover with the lid of the slow cooker, but place it slightly ajar so steam can escape.
- Cook on high for 2-3 hours, or low for 4-5 hours, stirring every half hour or so. Pumpkin butter is done when it is thick, creamy, and smells potently of pumpkin spice. Taste and adjust seasoning to your liking, adding more maple syrup or spices as desired.
- Transfer to a jar with a tight fitting lid and store in the fridge for up to two weeks.
Notes
- To make this on the stovetop, combine all ingredients in a medium-size saucepan over very low heat. Cover pan with a lid slightly ajar and cook for 30-45 minutes, stirring frequently, until the pumpkin butter is thick, creamy, and smells potently of pumpkin spice.
- Remember that the spices will intensify as the pumpkin butter cooks down. So it is best to start with a light hand-you can always add more spices later, but you won't be able to take them out!
- Canned pumpkin puree will give you a great pumpkin butter, but homemade pumpkin puree will give you the best pumpkin butter.
I cannot wait to make this again after our trip to the pumpkin patch this weekend—it was one of our favorites the last few years!