My Candied Apple Disaster And How I Saved The World

I crave the candied apples with the red, crackly candy coating. I refuse to eat the caramel versions, having no desire for the caramel versions. I have no will to even try one of the caramel versions. I am ready to hire a Houston criminal attorney to represent me in my crime of candied apple passion.

The reason is that I might have a new addiction. Taking on new diet violations are not acceptable.

No one makes the red candied apples any more. They are hard to find. Everything is dipped in buttery, rich caramel.

So I decided to get a candied apple making kit and to dip my own apples.

It did not go well.

But a new baked apple recipe was born.

Honeycrisps are a new species of apple that are a treat to look at and a treat to eat. They have a firm, incredibly sweet flesh and a mix of red, green, cream and other colors that make them a pleasure to the eye.

The Honeycrisp season is a very short one that lasts from sometime in October to Mid November if we are lucky. This causes great disappointment for those who try these apples out for the first time, and then make plans for them at Christmas time or later.

It is best to consult with the grocer to see when Honeycrisps will be available.

The disaster began when I bought a candied apple kit. Never before have I made a candied apple, so I decided to go with a kit and instructions that any fool could follow.

I washed the apples with soap and water, then rubbed them with vinegar and discovered that it takes much more to get the wax off of those apples. I gave up and decided to take my chances.

Suddenly I realized that I did not have sticks for the apples. As an act of desperation, I sacrificed my collection of grocery store sushi chopsticks and stuck those into the apples.

I discovered that the kit included sticks for the apples. Those will not replace my chopstick collection. I will have to buy more sushi. Lesson learned.

With the apples prepared and stuck, I commenced with the boiling of the candy.

The candy apple kit required that the candy had to boil until it reached the "hard crack" stage. This is determined by one of two methods. The old fashioned method is to drop a ball of syrup into the boiling mix. If the syrup gets hard enough to crack, then the sugar syrup is hot enough.

The other method is to use a candy thermometer and to boil the candy mix until it reaches 303°, or the "Hard Crack" stage. Most simple candy thermometers have a legend that tells the temperatures for various foods, so it is easy to watch as the temperature approaches 303°.

According to the kit, this should have taken about 18 minutes after the syrup started to boil.

The syrup boiled and boiled for 15 minutes. The thermometer never reached above 200°. Another 30 minutes did not produce the desired temperature. I could have turned up the temperature, but with other tasks to perform, I gave up and decided to dip the apples anyway.

And found out immediately that it is hard to get the wax off of the apples. The glaze refused to stick and to harden. After about an hour and a half of dipping, dripping and rolling, the apples remained coated with a sticky glaze that never hardened and never even got to a solid state.

I cut one apple into quarters, dredged it in the soup and ate it. It was delicious, but not what I had pined for: a sweet, crispy apple with a thin, crackly shell of candy.

The rest of the apples were abandoned until the next morning, as more and more glaze pooled up around the bottom of the pan.

I decided to core the sticky monsters and to:

lightly dust them with cinnamon, nutmeg, and one clove per apple,

a drop of almond extract per apple,

1/8 tsp of brandy per apple.

Then I plotted to dot with butter as shown in the picture.

The apples were baked at 325° for 35 minutes. They were still a bit firm, so I added some raw almonds that were hanging around and plotted to coat the almonds in that delightful, spicy and buttery glaze.

The apples and almonds were baked for another 15 minutes at 350° to cook down the glaze and coat the almonds.

After letting them cool for 10 minutes, the apples were ruled to have rehabilitated themselves and to have created a new delight for the taste buds:

Baked Candied Apples with glazed almonds!