Homemade caramel apples come down to one problem: keeping the caramel on the apple. Get
that right and everything else is straightforward.
Two things cause the slide. Supermarket apples are coated in food-grade wax to make them
shine, and caramel will not stick to wax. And caramel that has not been cooked far enough
stays soft and creeps down to the bottom overnight.
Getting the wax off
Pour just-boiled water over each apple, or dunk it for a few seconds, then rub hard with a
clean towel. You will see the towel come away slightly cloudy. That is the wax.
Then dry them completely. Any water left on the skin turns to steam under hot caramel and
lifts it straight off.
Chilling the apples afterwards helps too. Cold fruit sets the caramel faster on contact,
so less of it has time to run.
What apples to use
Tart and firm. Granny Smith is the standard answer and it is the right one - the sourness
cuts caramel that is otherwise very sweet, and the flesh is dense enough not to go mealy.
Honeycrisp and Braeburn both work. Avoid Red Delicious and anything soft or floury; they
collapse under the caramel and go watery within a day.
Small apples are easier to eat and give a better caramel-to-fruit ratio. A giant apple is
mostly apple.
You are aiming for softball stage, 235 to 240°F on a candy thermometer. Below that the
caramel never firms up and slides. Much above it and you get something closer to toffee that
cracks a tooth.
Brush the inside of the pan down with a wet pastry brush as it cooks. Sugar crystals
clinging to the sides fall back in and seed the whole batch grainy.
Do not stir once it is boiling. Swirl the pan instead.
Using bagged caramels instead
Unwrapping a bag of Kraft caramels and melting them with a splash of cream or evaporated
milk is a good shortcut, and it is what most people actually do. Melt slowly on low
heat or in short bursts in the microwave, stirring between each.
The trade-off is thickness. Bagged caramel sets softer than cooked caramel, so it is more
prone to sliding. Chill the apples first and it behaves.
Dipping and setting
Tilt the pan rather than using a wide shallow one - you want depth to dip into. Turn the
apple as you lift it, then hold it upside down for a few seconds so the excess runs back
toward the stick instead of pooling at the base.
Set them on a buttered sheet of parchment, not straight on a plate. The puddle at the
bottom is the part that welds itself to anything it touches.
Add toppings while the caramel is still tacky. Chopped nuts, crushed pretzels, mini
chocolate chips, sprinkles. Once it sets nothing sticks.
Storing them
Fridge, on parchment, loosely covered, up to about five days. Let them come back to room
temperature for fifteen minutes before eating or the caramel is unpleasantly hard.
Any caramel left in the pan keeps in a jar in the fridge and reheats gently for ice cream
later. There is no reason to throw it out.
