Caramel Apples

We've been trying all sorts of apple recipes to use up the plethora of apples we picked.  I wanted to make caramel apples and thought we would try to make homemade caramel.  I found a recipe that looked pretty straightforward, so after church we got started.

We got the apples ready for dipping.


It quickly became apparent that the caramel was going to take a while to cook, so Karsten quickly lost interest.  He came by occasionally to check it out, but was more interested in playing. We dipped a few apple pieces in it and it was so yummy. We thought the caramel needed to cook longer in order to get thicker, but in reality, we let it cook too long and burned it.


Then we were finally ready to dip the apples.


The caramel was looking thicker, so we dipped the first apple.  Notice the caramel is a much darker color - we now know that it was darker because it's burned.  


The clumpy caramel should have been an indication of a problem.  Now we see the err in our way.


After the apples were dry, we felt them and realized the caramel was rock hard.  So hard that we hit the apple on the counter and part of the caramel shattered.  Hmmm, that's not like any caramel apple I've had before.  I had grand plans of wrapping caramel apples in plastic wrap and a bow and giving them to friends.  Sadly, we didn't even have one turn out to be edible.


So, caramel apples were a failure.  We'll have to try it again with our new found caramel knowledge.