Introduction: Caramel Apples, Ole Timey Style

Your great grandma didn't use corn syrup in her caramel apples, and neither should you! You will find all kinds of recipes for caramel and caramel apples, and basically all of them say that you need corn syrup for one reason or another. What you need is something sweet that has a similar composition of glucose and fructose as the corn syrup. Corn syrup is about half glucose and half fructose. The corn syrup you buy at the store is usually Karo brand syrup. Karo is a mixture of half corn syrup (100% glucose) and half high-fructose corn syrup (90% fructose). Giving it about a 50/50 mixture of glucose and sucrose.

Substituting a sweetener that is mostly sucrose (table sugar, maple syrup) or fructose (agave nectar, 90% fructose) will not work. If you do not use the proper substitute, the fat will separate out of your caramel and the caramel will either end up brittle, or too greasy to stick to your apples. Sucrose is a disaccharide of fructose and glucose; in other words, sucrose is fructose linked to glucose. With caramel apples, the glucose essentially keeps everything in solution. Sucrose has a completely different structure. If there is not enough glucose, the sucrose recrystallizes and the fat gets pushed out of the caramel, and you do not have that chewy creamy goodness. So what is the magical mother nature substitute for corn syrup? HONEY! Honey has about the same glucose and fructose content as corn syrup. It took me 59 caramel apples worth of experimentation, but at the end of it all, I came up with a repeatable recipe for caramel apples that does not include any corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup.

This video shows a condensed version of the process. The footage is from one of my experimental batches using corn syrup in order to observe the properties of that kind of caramel. Just pretend that I'm adding half a cup of honey instead of Karo syrup:


Step 1: Ingredients and Equipment

It's amazing that I hadn't accidentally made caramel apples at some point; it is just that simple. Not altogether easy, the first time, but simple. This recipe will give you enough caramel to make eight caramel apples. However, if it is your first time, you will likely glop caramel all over the place and put too much caramel on your apples and you might end up with just 7 apples so coated in caramel that you will be any three-year-old's best friend for life.

Ingredients:

8 apples (7 if you are a pessimist)
1 cup Heavy Cream
1 cup Brown Sugar (Brown sugar is nice because it already has a caramelly flavor)
1/2 cup Honey
4 tbsp Butter (half of one stick)

That's it. I know. crazy.

Equipment:

1 medium sized pot (one with thick sides works better than a plain old steel one)
1 stirring implement, most likely a spoon
1 greasy little square of aluminum foil big enough to set your caramel apples on
1 cup or small bowl, full of cold water
8 sticks or forks or somethings you will use to jab your apples and hang on to when you eat them
measuring cups

***You will NOT be needing a thermometer of any kind***
Most of the time, the thermometers you buy on a whim at the grocery store can't be trusted. I will teach you how to determine when your caramel is done using the cold water test. Then when you're on a deserted island without your candy thermometer, you can still delight the natives with tasty treats.

Step 2: What's Going on in the Pot?

When you are making caramel for your caramel apples, you are heating your sweet mixture until the right amount of water boils off. As the water boils off, the concentration of sugar in the mixture increases. With caramel, you are shooting for a sugar concentration of around 87%. DON'T PANIC! Knowing that you must get the sugar concentration up to around 87% has nothing to do with actually making the apples. In fact, forget I mentioned any kind of number. The thing you need to burn into your mind is this: "Firm Ball".

As the concentration of sugar in your slurry goes up, the properties of the cooled caramel will change. Chewy, yet firm enough to hold it's shape and stick to the apple is the kind of caramel we want. If you don't cook enough of the water out, you will have soupy caramel that tastes awesome, but will migrate off of your apples as it cools. If you cook too much of the water out, you will have brittle caramel. The brittle caramel still tastes awesome, and can even look like the perfect caramel and stay on the apple, but when a small child tries to bite into their caramel apple, the caramel will shatter into a million pieces and get all over their costume and the floor. It will be easier to make good caramel than to explain recrystallization to a disappointed child.

There are interesting stages of candy all the way from caramel syrup to burnt sugar, but since we are making caramel apples, we'll focus on the "Firm Ball" window. If you would like a chart of the temperatures and the corresponding concentrations of sugar, you can look here on wikipedia: Sugar Chart. The firm ball stage is 244-248 degrees F / 118-120 degrees C and also happens to be a very delicious stage.

Step 3: The Cold Water Test

You will feel like a total champ when you do this right.

Cold Water Test:

1. While your cauldron of bubbling brown goodness is doing its thing, take a spoonful of it and drop it into a bowl or cup of cold water.

2. Give it a few seconds to cool.

3. Fish around in the bowl or cup of cold water and try to retrieve the caramel and make a little ball with it.

Several things can happen.

If you stick your fingers into the bowl, pull out a gooey mess and you can't do anything but smear the caramel, you need to boil the caramel some more. There is still too much water in your caramel and the concentration of sugar is too low. The caramel may even form little threads in the water, but if you cannot get the threads to form into a ball, you have some more boiling to do.

Thread Stage


If you are able to form a ball with your cooled caramel, but it slowly flattens when it is sitting on your hand or the counter, you have reached the "Soft Ball" stage. This is exciting because you are close to the right caramel, and you will need to check the caramel every minute or so to make sure that you don't go past it.

Soft Ball Stage


Firm Ball Stage

When you form a ball with the cooled caramel and it stays like a ball in your hand, that is far enough. You have reached the right concentration of sugar and you can turn off the heat.



The videos I've posted show the "Thread" stage, the "Soft Ball" stage, and the "Firm Ball" stage.

Step 4: Let's Do It! - Step 1: Dissolve Sugars in the Cream

Now that you have all the background you need to know and you've assembled all of your materials, you are more than ready for caramel making.

Measure one cup of heavy cream and pour it into your medium sized pot. Measure one cup of your sugar and pour it into the pot. Measure 1/2 cup of honey and pour it into the pot. Turn the burner to medium heat and stir constantly. You will need to essentially stir constantly throughout the whole caramel making process in order to ensure that everything stays homogenious and your sucrose doesn't start concentrating somewhere and planning a recrystallization.

Step 5: Step 2 : Melt the Butter in the Pot

Take your half stick of butter and cut it into four pieces of nearly equal size. Or, you can just throw the half-stick in as it is. I don't like adding steps that are actually not necessary. Add the butter to the pot of dissolved sugar in cream. Stir constantly until all of the butter has melted, completely mixed in and the whole thing comes to a boil. If it won't boil after 30 minutes of stirring on medium heat, increase the heat a bit until you bring it to a boil.

Step 6: Step 3 : Boiling and Cold Testing

Now, you are waiting for enough water to boil out of your mixture. Keep on stirring. Maybe even pull up a chair. You can do the cold test on your caramel as often as you like. You may end up with a little less caramel, but it is a good thing to practice.

When you are able to make a ball with your caramel and the ball stays in a ball shape in your hand, you are done boiling. Turn off the stove and skewer your apples. You'll need to let the caramel cool only until it stops bubbling on its own.

Step 7: Step 4: Coat Your Apples

Take a skewered apple and spoon the caramel on the apple in the fashion that I have shown in the video. Once the apple is covered with caramel, set the apple on your flat greasy aluminum foil and let it cool. When the caramel is cool enough to remove your apple from the foil, the apple will come off easily. If the caramel is still too warm, the caramel will not come off of the foil and you will mangle your caramel apples. I know they are tasty, but it will be worth the wait.



If it takes you a long time to coat an apple and you find yourself with a pot of caramel that is too stiff to stir, heat the caramel on low, stirring constantly until it is soft enough to spoon onto your apples. Just make sure that you don't heat the caramel back to its boiling point. If you keep it below the boiling point, when you reheat, you will retain the water content of perfect caramel and not undergo any further transformation of your mixture.

Step 8: Summary and Tips

I made 55 apples for a Halloween party. I used knives, bamboo sections, and red icing to make it look like they were stabbed heads. You could go for something more traditional like "coating them in nut pieces", but children don't generally choose the nut covered one when a stabbed head one is available.

Creating the Stabbed Head Look


Sometimes, I've seen trouble.....
If you find yourself with a pot of caramel and a layer of greasy fat on top, your caramel has become separated. There is still a chance that you can save it. First, remove the caramel from the heat and let it stop boiling, if it is still boiling. Add 3 tablespoons of water and 1/4 cup of honey. Then put the whole thing back on medium heat and stir it like crazy. Stir until it all looks like normal again and your caramel makes a firm ball when you do the cold water test. Then remove the pot from the burner and stir it until it stops boiling. Then immediately try and coat your apples. This is your last chance, so make it quick and do whatever you have to do to get the caramel on the apple. Even if you only end up with one or two caramel apples before the fat separates again, at least you can invite one friend over and eat your apples while you mope a little and then try again. If you really get depressed, you can add 1/2 cup of corn syrup to anything and it will fix it when you heat it up again.

Myths About Caramel Apple Making

-When you are making caramel for caramel apples with my recipe, you do not have to have to clean your pot between batches.

-Don't put the apples in the freezer to loosen the aluminum foil from the apples, it will turn your apples into mush and ruin them.

-You don't need corn syrup.

-Stirring does not cause your caramel to recrystallize.

Good Luck!