Toffee Apples!

Each year around Halloween I like to make Toffee Apples.  They are so simple to make, yet for some reason they only make an appearance once a year - probably because they are cumbersome and tricky to eat and sticky toffee tends to go flying everywhere when you crunch into them.  Saying that, could you resist sinking your teeth into one?  I certainly couldn't  (well I had a civilised slice if I'm honest) and for those who know me, that is saying something as I don't eat sugar as a norm.

 

Some of the ingredients you'll need - I forgot to put vinegar and red food colouring on the counter - oops!

The recipe says to pour boiling water over the apples to remove the waxy coating, you know how you can buff up an apple and make it shiny because it has a sort of waxy bloom on it?  Well that can prevent the toffee from sticking to the apple so it has to be removed. 

Well that made my warning system go off, but anyway, I did as I was told, then gave myself an internal kick because I should have listened to my inner voice.  When you want to skin peaches or tomatoes you pour boiling water over them..... The picture on the right shows that this is true for apples too.  Next time I will not use boiling water, but rather very hot water so as not to cook the first 1mm of apple, hmmm :-/

 Next you have to stick a lolly stick into the apple - I save these when the girls have ice lollies, I simply put them in the dishwasher and they come out all shiny and new!  This is fine for family use I feel, but perhaps if you are giving your Toffee Apples away as gifts you might want to buy sticks? I don't know, heck they've been through the dishwasher.....what do you think?

 Next step is to put your sugar and water into a pot and bring it to the boil - 5 minutes till dissolved.

 When the sugar has dissolved you add 4 Tablespoons of golden syrup....Our syrup here in the Netherlands is very dark as you can see, but it's the same stuff as "golden" syrup.

 Next add 1 teaspoon of vinegar - this causes the mixture to bubble up quite ferociously so be careful!

 For people (like me) who don't have a thermometer to test the temperature of the toffee, you can use the old fashioned method...... Pour a little of the toffee into a small bowl of ice cold water.  Leave it a few seconds to set and then pick it up to test it.  If it is soft and can roll into a ball as shown in the above picture, then you've reached the "Soft Ball" stage often referred to in toffee making.  That's no good for toffee apples, you need to boil the toffee for just a little bit longer.

The same test done just a couple of minutes later and you can see the difference - the toffee holds its shape and snaps/cracks instead of rolling into a ball.  This is the stage you're looking for when making toffee apples.  Beware because if you cook it much longer than this it can begin to burn!

  

At this stage I added 1 teaspoon of red food colouring..Don't stir too much as you can cause your toffee to crystallize.

And you're good to go!  Be very careful here, dip the apples in and rock them from side to side to cover completely.

Et Voilá!  Make sure you have a piece of baking paper to put your Toffee Apples on - otherwise it could go seriously wrong and you end up with a lot of cleaning up to do!  Don't they look gorgeous? 

Ok, and here is a confession - I messed up!  I was a little bit too enthusiastic in my attempts to cover the whole apple.  Here is what happened,  In my efforts to cover the whole apple, I tilted the pot and swirled the toffee up against the sides of the pot.  This is a BAD thing to do because there are bits of crystallized toffee up the sides and if any of those crystals get into your lovely shiny toffee you are done for my friend!  Yes, it turns the whole batch to a crystalline mess!  And while we are on the topic of messing up.... I should have turned the heat OFF completely, instead I turned it down very low....which resulted in the last 2 apples being a shade darker than their fair sisters. 

As you can see, not a pretty sight!  At least it was only the last two apples which were so badly treated!  Live and learn my friends, live and learn! 

For the record I used this recipe and added 5ml of red food colouring to jazz things up a bit!  Oh, and I used small sweet Royal Gala apples instead of sour Granny Smith (which probably would taste better with all that super sweet toffee), the only reason being that they were kid sized apples and the Granny Smiths were giants in comparison!

If you are going to wrap them, then don't forget to oil your celophane before hand....