Toffee apples

Today we're going to talk about toffee apples. For those of you looking for an update on how the meal plan is coming along, that's coming up, with a few modifications. But for now, toffee apples.

I've never made toffee apples before (or caramel or candy apples), but I love them. They're one of my favorite season-specific foods, though I don't know why they aren't widely available all year round. They should be. 

Anyway, Mr. Idiot and I attempted our very own toffee apples over the weekend, and they came out visually subpar, but very, very tasty.

I wanted to make our own toffee, but the Mister said that would be too much work, so we used toffee bits instead, which did end up being pretty easy. 

Thankfully we were gifted a little double boiler so we didn't have to rig one up out of our stuff, but if you aren't lucky enough to have generous in-laws, this is a handy article about how to make one of your very own at home, courtesy of the Unsophisticook. 

Anyway. 

We realized after we'd started the process we didn't really know what we were doing, and after some rapid Googling brought up no one specific way to do toffee apples, we just followed our hearts. 

Melt the toffee bits in the double boiler. This takes longer than you think—unless you actually know what you're doing—if you're like me and have never actually used a double boiler before (and maybe thought those metal bowls were for salad or something when you unpacked). My recommendation is get the water boiling, add the toffee bits and then go make yourself some tea. You'll have around fifteen minutes to kill. 

Somewhere in that fifteen minutes, pull the stems off your apples and stick skewers through the core. Make sure they don't come out the other end. We used bamboo kebab skewers, but we had to use four per apple because they were pretty flimsy. 

I don't know if it was the toffee bits we used, or if it's just our impatience, but we couldn't get the toffee to completely melt. There were bits of toffee bit floating around after twenty minutes of melting, so we just went ahead and started dunking. 

It melted a bit more than this, but you get the idea. Lumpy. 

Our double boiler is pretty shallow so we had to get a spoon and pour the melted toffee over the apples to get them completely covered, but to get a nice smooth coating on the apple rotate it in the toffee. While the toffee is still hot, you can dunk the apple in any toppings you want. We did two plain, two with chocolate sprinkles, two with walnuts and two with pecans.

The plain ones came out just fine, a tad lumpy because of the stubbornly unmelted toffee, but looking okay. 

Through a bit of trial and error we discovered that if you'd like your extra toppings to stay on the apple and not slide off into a puddle of melted goo, you have to put the apples directly into the fridge so the toffee hardens. 

Case in point.

We'll definitely be doing these again. They were really easy to make, really inexpensive, and really fun. It was nice to be in the kitchen together, since I do most of the cooking. Unless it's Sunday brunchtime, and then Mr. Idiot has the floor. The nice thing about these is that they'll last up for a long time in the fridge. We made these about a week ago, and the apples are still nice and crisp. And if these two idiots can do it, it's guaranteed that you and your idiot, or your kids can do these together and eat them all week (if they last that long!)

Happy cooking.