Word of mouth: My kitchen

By Travis Hill

According to my bank statement, times is friggin’ TOUGH these days.

So, with apologies to the myriad fine eating establishments throughout the Oldest City, I thought this month we would take a break. Instead of reviewing a restaurant, my wife and I stayed in. And to take it even further, we decided dinner was for losers and just went straight for dessert.

We chose caramel apples because we had never made them before and we wanted something Halloween-y.

Note: Making your own caramel, while cool, takes A LOT longer than you think. And that takes away from the overall mission to have fun decorating the apples and actually eating them. We recommend leaving that to the experts and trying our super-duper easy method.

What you need:

• Apples – Duh. We recommend granny smith.
• Caramel – Double duh. Get a bag of the little square caramels (one 14-oz. bag is enough to coat six apples).
• Toppings – Whatever floats your boat. We went with Snickers (sliced), candy corns, Butterfinger (smashed) and crushed walnuts (we bought that way).

Prep work:

• Unwrap the caramels – Hint for the non-cooks in the group: You can appear useful by unwrapping the caramels. And you can steal one or two for your tummy along the way.
• Ready the toppings – This part is awesome. One piece of Snickers for the bowl, one piece of Snickers for me …
• Make two basecamps – First, get a piece of wax paper and throw it over your cutting board. This is where you’ll be rolling the apples in the toppings. Then, get a baking sheet and throw some wax paper on it. That’s where you’ll put the finished product to dry.
• Stab your apples – Unfortunatelty, our Winn Dixie does not carry popsicle sticks. But we found a bag of caramels that actually comes with them (and plastic knives work just as well). Jamming the popsicle sticks in the apples is another fantastic non-cook activity. Important tip: keep your apples at room temperature. The caramel won’t stick as well if they are really cold.

Making it happen:

• Heat the caramels and two tablespoons of milk for 2 minutes in a microwavable bowl (stir it up after one minute).
• After it cools slightly, take an apple and dip it in the caramel. Slowly rotate the apple to make sure you get full coverage. We found that a spatula was handy to fill in the bald spots.
• Once the apple is caramel-ed, lay out whatever topping you want on the wax paper on your cutting board and slowly roll it on.
• For candy bar or candy corn topping, it’s better to just stick the pieces on there.
• Place the finished apples on the wax papered cookie sheet and let cool.

That’s it. Between the apples and toppings, it’s dessert you can make for less than $10. Plus it didn’t take very long, and the results were taaaaasty.