Candy Apples

For some reason I've become slightly obsessed with candy apples. Maybe it's the fact that I've been watching season one of Once Upon A Time (the evil witch apples thing) or maybe a Pinterest image got stuck in my subconscious. Most likely it's a combination of the two. A quick search on Pinterest turned into a long look at pretty candy apple images and then there was no way I was getting over this obsession without making some of my own...

I've always been partial to caramel apples over the red candy ones, so I decided to go with caramel and chocolate. And the Little Miss hates anything caramel flavour, so I did some with chocolate only. I used the recipe from this blog and prepared my apples and toppings as per their suggestions.

It turns out that my caramel coating skills are pretty atrocious. The caramel started to harden so quick that it was tricky to get the toppings to stick, but then it didn't harden enough, so it all slid down the apple and turned into a sticky apple sitting in a pool of caramel. Adding a coating of chocolate helped with this though.
 
I found that my melted chocolate was a bit too thick for dipping the apples in, so I painted the chocolate on with the back of my spoon. This actually worked really well and it gave me more control, which I like. And as far as rolling the apples in the toppings... I put the toppings in wide shallow bowls, as my research suggested, but found that the caramel/chocolate was coming off onto the toppings and the toppings weren't sticking to the apples very well. I ended up pouring on the little toppings (like sprinkles & little candy hearts) and placing/pushing on the others on with my fingers which worked much better.

The Little Miss is going to a princess birthday party tomorrow, and I know that the birthday girl is a fan of Snow White, so I thought this red ribbon apple would go nicely on the top of her present.

Over all I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, although I think I'll just stick with chocolate ones next time. I'm thinking these would be a hit next time I need to provide baking for a fundraising event.