Better Butters

“We’re a family that likes to cook,” says Ellen Lev, who grew up in Pennsylvania’s Amish country, “and my brother-in-law wanted to start a little mail-order company.”

So six years ago, Lev and her mother began experimenting with the family’s apple butter recipe, substituting other fruits for the apples.

“Our idea,” she explains, “was to take this old-fashioned recipe, modernize it and package it for an upscale gourmet market.”

Today their company sells nine versions of fruit butters (our favorite is plum); five more, including cranberry-pear and honey-vanilla-peach, are in the works.

Fruit butter is nothing more than fruit, a small amount of sugar and some spices slowly cooked down to a thick concentrate. It takes three to five pounds of fruit to fill an 11-ounce jar. A teaspoon of fruit butter contains only about 10 calories.

Fruit butters are excellent slathered on muffins, but even better mixed into yogurt or over a scoop of cottage cheese. Best of all, since they are entirely natural, Stonehill Farm’s fruit butters make a politically correct statement on any bread. A 5-ounce jar costs $3 to $3.50, plus $3.25 for shipping, or three jars for $12.75, plus $4.25 for shipping.

Stonehill Farms, P.O. Box 158, Schwenksville, Pa. 19473. (800) 776-7155. MasterCard, Visa