One of the reasons I love cooking is that I see each recipe as a little project. You have to gather your ingredients, weigh them carefully and then transform, often humble ingredients, into something magical by the process of cooking. There is often an interesting skill involved in cooking and in the case of making toffee apples it is heating the sugary ingredients until they reach the correct temperature for a good toffee to be formed. I adapted this recipe from Delicious Magazine and it works so well. It makes enough toffee for about 10 medium apples.
Ingredients
500g caster sugar
2 tsp white wine vinegar
50g unsalted butter
1 tbsp golden syrup
150 ml water
Red gel food colouring
10 medium apples
10 thick wooden sticks or clean twigs
Baking tray lined with non-stick baking pape
Method
Put the sugar, vinegar, butter, syrup and 150ml cold water in a pan over low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Turn up the heat slightly until the mixture reaches a gentle boil and begins to turn golden brown. You can also use a sugar thermometer or temperature probe and heat the syrup until it reaches 140°C.
Using a long handled metal spoon swirl 1/4 tsp red gel food colouring into the hot toffee and add a tiny bit more is you want a deeper red colour. Be careful not to make the toffee look too artificial. Put the sticks into the apples and place them on a tray lined with non stick paper ready to dip into the toffee. Take each apple and dip into the toffee and then sit it on the tray lined with baking paper. Allow the toffee to for around 30 minutes. These will keep for a couple of days.
