Country Candy Apples

It's Fall Y'all!! 

My favorite time of the year. Leaves changing color, chilly nights, trips to the pumpkin patch, talking and having fun around a roaring fire pit with my family. Nothing is better than that! My kids and I have a tradition of making the one thing that makes us all think about fall in our house, candy apples. Fresh juicy mountain apples, wrapped in a layer of crunchy, sweet, red candy. One word comes to mind, Scrumptious! Actually make that two words, because when you mix candy apples with a 3 year old, you also get Sticky. My kids love them, they love the process of making them and the time they get to spend helping mama.  So these are our Country (Scrumptious and Sticky) Candy Apples.

My Lily 

Ingredients:
8 - 10 medium size red apples. (I used fresh red mountain apples)
A stick for each apple (or you could use Popsicle sticks, but how boring is that!?!?)
2 Cups White Sugar
1 Cup Light Corn Syrup
1 1/2 Cups Water
Red Food Coloring 

We started by gathering our sticks from out of the woods. Cutting them to 10" to 12" each, the length really depends on how long you want them. My kids had a ball gathering the sticks and watching me trim them to size. Once you have your sticks all trimmed to the length you want, get a good sharp knife and whittle the ends down to a nice sharp point. Please be careful and don't whittle your fingers! After you have everything cut, trimmed and whittled, it's time to wash your sticks to make sure you get all the little nasties off. 

Once you have all of the stuff above finished you are ready to assemble your apples. Just take a stick, take an apple, and insert the stick in the middle of the apple. You don't want your apples falling over, so set them on a flat surface to see how they sit on their own and then insert your stick at the appropriate angle. On some you'll have to put a little pressure, because the sticks are a little big. DON'T BEAT YOUR APPLES to try to get the stick in!!! They'll bruise and who wants to eat a bruised apple.....candy covered or not.

Thanks to my darlin' son for helping out with this part!!

Alrighty!! Now it's time to combine the sugar, light corn syrup and water in a medium saucepan on medium to high heat. Stir the ingredients to make sure they combine and the sugar dissolves. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally. It's gonna take about 30 minutes for the mixture to reach the right temperature. I don't own a candy thermometer. My mama never owned one and my grand mama never owned one either. We've always "eye-balled" everything we cook, which still amazes my hubby to this day. So, I use the water in a cup technique. The idea is to let the candy mixture boil and bubble, so when you drop a bit into a cup of cold water brittle strings and a hard ball form, thus the "Hard Ball or Hard Crack Stage". Again, this will take about 30 minutes or so. It really is easy peasy!

You also are gonna want to get out a baking sheet and line it with waxed paper to transfer your candy dipped apples onto to cool. I also sprayed mine with a little cooking spray to make sure my candy covered apples didn't stick. Trust me, you want to do this NOW! While everything is cooking.

From plain stuff to yummy candy!!

After about 30 minutes start testing your mixture for the "Hard Ball", dip a spoon into the boiling candy (PLEASE be careful! This stuff is like molten lava!) then let the mixture that is stuck to the spoon ooze off into a cup of cold water. A string should form and a ball at the bottom of the cup of water.  Do like I do, feel the ball at the bottom to see if it is hard. If no string forms or the ball isn't hard enough, then it isn't done. Let it continue to cook until you get the string and hard ball. I let mine cook in extra 2 minutes increments, so I wouldn't accidentally burn it, because it can go from awesome to burnt in a short time. Here's a link for those of you I've just confused that may make it easier to understand what I'm talking about.. Cold Water Test.

Once you've reached the hard ball stage, remove your mixture from the heat and add about 12-14 drops of the red food coloring to the hot mixture, more or less if you like, and stir to combine. It depends on how red you want your apples. You can also add a flavoring to the candy at this point if you'd like, but I didn't. I love the taste of the candy without any extra flavoring. But to each his own.

Coloring and Dipping

The time has finally come to dip your apples! Very carefully, cause like I said this stuff is molten lava hot, take your apples by the inserted stick and carefully dip them in the candy mixture, making sure to cover the entire apple. Once the apple is covered with the hot gooey candy, set it aside onto the waxed paper lined baking sheet.  Continue, working quickly but carefully (the candy is cooling) until all the apples are covered. Now let your candy covered apples cool on the baking sheet, it won't take long for them to cool and the candy to harden. 

The finished product and a happy 3 year old

Now you may notice that you have a little bit of the hot candy syrup left over in your saucepan. I don't know about y'all but I'm not gonna waste this yummy goodness!! I took a piece of waxed paper sprayed with cooking spray, laid it out on my cutting board and poured the candy onto it. I let it cool and then broke it up, dusted it with powdered sugar and WAH LAH! Sea Glass Candy!! My kids love it!! So see, you have two recipes in one! Just leave out the apples and sticks. Add some flavoring or don't, you can change the food coloring color if you want and add powdered sugar for dusting the broken up candy and now you have Sea Glass for the eating, enjoying and it makes a great gift too!

My teenager eating the hardened candy off of the spoon
and the cooling candy apples and sea glass.

Sea Glass Candy made with left over hot candy syrup and powdered sugar!