Fragrant apples covered with frozen caramel are an amazingly tasty and beautiful treat. Caramel can be golden brown and red. Simple ingredients, simple culinary manipulations - and you can delight loved ones with an interesting dessert. Children will be especially happy!
Pick your recipe
This dessert is traditional for home cooking in the United States and Great Britain. Apples in caramel are considered an autumn-winter treat and are prepared for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Guy Fawkes Day, Christmas. This tradition is connected with the season of picking apples and the possibilities of their storage. But now apples can be bought at any time of the year, so you can cook this sweetness whenever you want.
To make a dessert you will need:
- apples - 5 pcs.;
- sugar (preferably brown) - 1 tbsp.;
- table vinegar - 1 tsp;
- butter - 1 tbsp. l.;
- water - 110 ml (slightly less than half a glass);
- wooden skewers - 5 pcs.;
- wax paper for baking - 1 sheet.
The best choice will be sour and hard varieties of apples. For example, Granny Smith, Cox Ranetki. But this is not necessary: there are lovers of sweet apples in caramel. You can use a sweet variety by sprinkling apples with lemon juice.
Classic caramel apples are prepared as follows. Place a large pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil. Washed apples need to be strung on skewers, piercing the fruits from the stem to the center.
Dip the apples in boiling water for a couple of minutes, then remove and dry with napkins or a paper towel. (This procedure is necessary to dissolve the natural wax on the peel, which will allow caramel to stick better to apples. But you can just wash the apples thoroughly, the main thing is to dry well).
Mix sugar and water in a small pan (it is best to take a ladle with a handle). Put on fire and wait for the sugar to dissolve completely. Turn down the fire. Put the butter in the boiled syrup and pour the vinegar. Boil the syrup on reduced heat for 8-12 minutes. Do not forget to stir! As a result, the water will gradually boil, and you will get viscous caramel.
Now dip the skewered apples in boiling caramel. Act quickly but carefully: caramel can spatter hot sprays. It’s best to tilt the pan (which is why the bucket with the handle is most convenient), dip the apple in caramel and wrap it around the axis a couple of times. Place the finished treats on wax paper for hardening.
Want to play with flavors? Add ½ teaspoon of cinnamon to caramel along with vinegar and butter. For acid, you can add a spoonful of lemon juice. And for red, food color is put in caramel.
After the caramelized apples are ready, they can be wrapped in wax paper by wrapping it around a lollipop and tightly bandaging it. For two or three days, such "sweets" can be stored in the refrigerator, and with the onset of the holiday - give out as tasty souvenirs.
There is a recipe for caramel apples in the East. It is slightly different from the west. The Chinese cook apples in caramel not whole, but sliced into slices (quarters or eights). The peel is removed, and apples are sprayed with lemon juice - so as not to darken. Then 100 g of flour and 15 g of starch are mixed in a bowl. Separately, mix 150 ml of milk and three proteins. This mixture is poured into flour, everything is mixed.
Dipping apple slices in this mixture, it is necessary to fry them in deep fat and transfer to a paper towel. Caramel is cooked in the usual way, but a tablespoon of sesame is added to it. Apples fall into this sweet mass. And immediately you need to dip apple slices into ice water so that the caramel instantly hardens.