the best intentions...

I needed to write a Halloween column for my glamorous and high-paying newspaper career.  I knew Halloween was really all about treats, and I also knew that I was not much of a sweet maker, so I headed to the grocery store to cast about for some ideas.  Milling about in the produce, I spotted the first fall crop of my favorite apples--Honeycrisp.  Unlike some apples, they aren't available all year long.  I don't know why.  Perhaps they don't store as well as some other apples.  Or they don't grow as many and they just sell out.  But there they were, calling to me.  I already had a great caramel recipe, so why not caramel apples.  I mean, how hard could it be?  I snapped up a couple of kinds of chocolate and some nuts for decorating my Halloween creations and headed home.

caramel, bubbling away

The caramel was beautiful and glossy.  I cooked it down, to make sure it would set up on the apples, let it cool a little, poured it in a bowl, stabbed sticks into my apples, and commenced with the dipping.

An hour later I had eight apples blobbed with uneven coats of caramel--some spots too thick, some spots too thin, and a sludgy pool of caramel forming at the bottom of every apple.  I had caramel on the counter, all over my hands, and stuck in my hair.  Forget dipping those sad confectioner's specimens in chocolate and nuts.  Forget putting a picture of those in the paper.  I didn't even think of taking a picture of them, though I wish I had, so I could show you just what a disaster they were.

I left them on the kitchen counter and went off to sit on the porch and think about what else I could do.  The very idea of tossing all of that tasty caramel stuck in my craw, and I certainly didn't want to toss those apples.  It occurred to me that the caramel was making its way down the sides of the apples anyway, so why not just help it along?  I swiped the caramel off the apples into a pan, thinned it with a bit of cream, and made a caramel dipping sauce.  I washed the apples and sliced them into little wedges.  There you have it.  Apples with caramel dipping sauce.  Worked for me.  But it did seem a bit boring.

What about those chocolates and nuts?  How about a Halloween bark?  I certainly didn't want to work too hard, after the apple debacle.  What could be more simple than some white chocolate colored orange, spread out and pressed with toasted nuts and dried apricots, and drizzled with dark chocolate.  In less than half an hour, I had my Halloween candy.

from disaster comes a pretty holiday treat

the rescued apples and caramel

I will never make caramel apples again...