Spiced Apple Butter

My mom is a purist when it comes to apple butter, and she has the cooking-apple-butter-over-an-open-fire pedigree to lend heft to her contention that, made properly, apple butter needs nothing more than apples. Period. No vinegar, no sugar, no spices—just apples. It’s damn hard work making it the old-fashioned way, though, with the hockey-stick-shaped stirrer and the iron cauldron—oh, yes—and the open fire that has to be kept at just the right temperature for something like eighty-two hours