Caramel Apple Disaster

Well, I successfully made something that didn't involve chocolate. The bad news was that it turned out horribly. As in, uneatable.

I had never had any kind of candy apple but they were highly talked about by my roomies, so I decided to make them. I found what seemed like a good recipe and had fun at the store picking out different toppings for the apples like nuts, sprinkles and coconut.

Lindsey and I did our usual ritual of her starting to prepare dinner and I started adding all the ingredients to the sauce pan. The recipe called for all the ingredients to boil on medium-high heat for 40 minutes which I thought was way too much. Being worried about them turning out right, I typically follow directions religiously. However, the caramel seemed to be getting worse, and I still had 15 minutes left. I decided to go ahead and turn the burner off and start covering the apples.

It was a super stressful process. I had Lindsey put all the toppings in bowls and I tried to cover the apples with the caramel while stirring the caramel constantly so it wouldn't burn to the pot. The caramel was being stubborn and not sticking, and when I finally would get the caramel on the sprinkles were caramel resistant. The coconut and nuts were a little more cooperative but it was all way too stressful. The caramel dried way too quickly. The caramel ended up burning so I only ended up making 4 apples instead of 8.

Lindsey and I ate our dinner, and I definitely enjoyed a glass of wine from all the stress the baking was causing. The whole point of me baking is to relax, and enjoy the smells coming from the kitchen. Not this week.

We go check the caramel apples after dinner and they were rock hard. As in, impossible to take a bite out of. We tried to cut the apples and the caramel and toppings completely fell off the apples. Complete failure.

The worst part was that after the completely horrible disaster, the pan from the caramel cooking was the most horrible thing I have ever dried to clean. EVER. I had it soak for hours and some of the caramel came off. I ended up having to do this hot water soaking and scrubbing process for days. Literally, for days.

Basically, I do not ever suggest trying to make your own caramel apples. Leave it to the state fair, guys. Not only will you be sad to waste time and money but the process and clean up is stressful and annoying.

Maybe I should go back to my chocolate recipes. I was definitely more successful with those. This recipe will definitely not be going in my cookbook. Maybe next week I should go back to my cookbook where I just need 4 ingredients, that was working pretty well for me.

At least the pictures of the candy apples turned out well!