Candy Ahead!

[hollyking]

I've had some great responses from you all when I've asked for a bit of cooking help. Thank you everyone for them all. Be assured that I will get around to trying them all and will let you know how it all turns out.

Since the apple sauce was a great success I want to knock off another item from my list of Things to Cook. Namely candy apples and by that I mean the apples with a cinnamon hard candy shell. I love these things and want to make my own. I would also like to make my own hard candy.

Does anyone have some favorite books or resources about making candy apples or hard candy? Thanks!

Comments

[apestyle.livejournal.com]

What's the icon from? Its coool!

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

Girl Genius! A wonderful steampunk comic by Phil and Kaja Foglio. You can read it online.

[ragnorokt.livejournal.com]

I have one bit of advice for you. Work carefully with the sugar arts, boiling sugar is much hotter than water, and sugar holds much more energy. The result is pastry chefs refer to it as napalm.

Basically what you need to do is make a sugar syrup and take it to hard crack, add a little red food coloring and cinnamon candy flavoring, swirl that in and then dip in apples on a stick. The trick is the sugar will by around 300° F, and you will need enough to submerge the apples in without going over the sides of the pot.

A candy thermometer is a critical requirement here, guessing only works if you do that sort of thing all the time.

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

Quantities would also be helpful? How much sugar, water, flavoring? And I'm guessing I need to add the other stuff after I get to the hard crack stage?

[ragnorokt.livejournal.com]

That is just the thing, without knowing the size of the pot you plan to use or the size of the apples it is sort of tough to give amounts. I seem to remember something about candy apples on the Drunken Decorator's Halloween special on Food Network. Just go to that site and type candy apples in the search bar. It is actually a pretty good search.