netmouse | Candied Apple

Yesterday a co-worker of mine was explaining how he'd made candied apples this past weekend, a process that he says is quite easy so long as you have some manual dexterity and a tolerance for pain (I should point out that his don't look like the one on the right, because he goes to the trouble of putting them right-side-up in a rack so the candy doesn't pool on top of the apple. Doing this risks getting hot candy coating dripped on your hand. Thus the pain). We realized in the course of the discussion that I was confused about the difference between a candied and a caramel apple (candied apples have a bright red cinamon-flavored candy on them, as you see) and, once that was established, that I couldn't remember ever having eaten a candied apple.

So this morning when I came in to the office, there was a candied apple waiting on my desk, wrapped in wax paper.

Wow. It's delicious. And it may be easy to make (he says the recipe has few ingredients and is in The Joy of Cooking if you want to try it) but it was one of the trickier foods I've ever tried to eat: it's sticky, and the candy coating tends to break into pieces when you bite into it and some pieces may fall off. Eating it over the wax paper was the best way. I might have to make these some fall when I have a crowd to please.

(He noted that they are best the first day, by the way, and less sticky - after a while the candy tends to pick up moisture from the air and get more sticky and less hard)