We bought some apple cider when we went apple picking a few weeks ago, and while it's tasty stuff it seems it's not what people wanted to be spending their sweet budget on: we still had 2/3 of it left three weeks later. I decided to reduce it and make syrup, partly so that it would keep longer but mostly because apple cider syrup seemed like a fun ingredient to have available.
I put the cider in the slow cooker, the same way Julia reduces sap to make maple syrup. Possibly I should have filtered it first, but I didn't. I left it all day with the lid cracked so liquid could escape. Occasionally one of us would check on it, including tipping the lid over the sink to ditch the condensate, and ~8hr later it was down to ~1/8 the original volume.
It's very flavorful, and I can think of a lot of ways I might incorporate it into desserts.
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It's also available commercially, e.g., from King Arthur Baking. It's usually called something like "New England Boiled Cider". It has a long and interesting history linked with the anti-slavery movement, since it was an alternative to molasses which was produced on sugar plantations in the South with slave labor. It fell out of frequent use sometime during WWII, I dont' know why.
I use it a lot in apple pies, as a way to amp up the apple flavor without too much additional sweetness.
There also used to be a popular thing called "Boiled Cider Pie", whose filling was a custard made from this. James Beard has an intriguing variation involving grated apples that's in my kitchen queue.
Your 8:1 reduction is more extreme than I've seen before; usually recipes go for 5x or 6x reduction.
I also really like the flavor:sugar ratio relative to most syrups.
My measurement isn't very precise: it might have been more like 6x