Caramel Apples

autumn.

I love that word.  It means sweaters and fires in the fireplace and pumpkin pie and walks in the woods on crunching leaves while the air is brisk but the sun is shining. 

This fall my apple tree in front of the house went nuts.  They were perfectly imperfect apples with blushes of pink where the sun managed to reach them through the leaves and lots of spots that looked like freckles or appaloosa speckles.

However, I don't particularly care for apples; I'll eat them raw but I don't care for them cooked and what are you going to do with them?  (Note that I did not plant the tree, it came with the house and it's beautiful in Spring with the flowers...but every other year I'm on apple clean-up detail.) 

This is one of the three buckets of apples that were low enough for me to pick on foot or with a short ladder.  There were many more that got composted because they fell and rotted, or I couldn't reach them and they're still falling and I'm too lazy to go out and pick them. 

Just because I don't much care for apples them doesn't mean they aren't fun to play with.  I decided to try my hand at caramel apples.  I thought I was going to have a bunch of perfectly cute specimens to drop off with people.  I started by eschewing the popsicle sticks in favor of sharpened twigs for the handles.

I made a lot...

And then it was time to add the caramel.  Even though they make the little caramel balls that you can buy in a bag with no wrappers I went authentic and did the Brach's caramels and unwrapped two whole bags.  I also planned to dip the bottoms in nuts or sprinkles so they'd be less sticky and more decorative.

I had to try the pose of the ingredients like all my favorite food bloggers.  Plus I had several cute sticks I wanted to show off.  However, I don't think the white quilt and white cakestand managed to pull off the lightbox effect I need for these photos.

 

I'm hoping to learn how to do it for real soon.  But I think I need a better camera to make that happen.

 

I melted all of the caramel and tried dipping my apples. That part worked just fine, I  had a nice thin, smooth coat going that wouldn't rip out your teeth when you took a bite.  But - it wouldn't stick on the apples.  It just kept sliding off onto the waxed paper.

 

I headed online for tips.  I found I should have chilled the apples, and tossed them back into the refrigerator as soon as they were dipped.  I kind of did that on the rest of the apples, but I also let my caramel thicken a bit much so I had to spread it on the apples instead of dipping.  Oh, the sprinkles and nuts were a complete failure too - they just turned into glop with the pooling caramel on the first try, and wouldn't stick to version two.

 

In the end I got a dozen or so good apples, with really heavy caramel that did threaten to loosen a tooth or two.

 

I took them to my friends' house for the Iowa vs. Iowa State game.  I did not go wandering around the neighborhood with caramel apple goodness for all the children I adore like I daydreamed. 

 

It was a fun day in the kitchen nonetheless, and a great start to my favorite season of the year.

 

Even though I'm writing this post well after the fact, apples are still falling in my front yard.  Want some?