Bonfire night and toffee apples

Bonfire night is upon us and Ali is getting ready with his many fireworks to put on a good display for us in the back garden.  Uncle Andrew is coming to and we cant wait to see him again its been too long, Ali said that even Uncle Andrew is bring some fireworks too, i think its going to be a long night.


When uncle Andrew came he bought some monster big fireworks.  Ali was really impressed with his own shells he bought, that was until uncle Andrew said that's not a shell this is a shell.

In all it took us 4 and a half hours of letting off fire works and we still have some left we even let off 2 at a time and even 3 at some point.  The boys did our house proud with their finale fireworks that cracked the sky open and covered it in colour. Thank goodness i fixed us a little feast to munch through, slow roasted sticky sausages with caramelised onions, and juicy sweetcorn on the cob all washed down with ruby red port to keep us warm while we stand in the garden.  After you just have to have a good old fashion bonfire treat of toffee apples.

These were a bit tricky to make due to lots of little incidence that hindered me on the way.

I made pretty sticks for the apples by cross wrapping ribbon round them before i pushed them into the apples.

First apples have wax on them so when i did my first apple it didn't feel waxy at all but the caramel just slide off the apple making a mess.  So i washed them in hot not boiling water to make sure all the wax was off the apples.

to make the caramel i put in a heavy bottom pan the following

1 cup of corn syrup
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup of dark brown sugar
1 cup of double cream
1/4 tsp of salt

Corn syrup is used a lot in America and i really like it as its not as heavy or as sweet as golden syrup and it has a cleaner purer taste.  I have never found it in the supermarkets but found a store on-line that sells it.

I melted the sugars and cream together over a medium heat and used my sugar thermometer to watch when it the sugars hit 234 degrees this took about 10 - 15 mins and i dropped in

3tablespoons of butter
3/4 tsp of vanilla bean paste but you can use extract

Don't be tempted to get your apples swooshing in the mix as you will hit disaster again as the mix needs to be left to cool for about 5 minuets to thicken and then it will hold better on the apple. Let the excess run off and place on grease proof paper, here i came a cropper again and found i needed to oil the paper as well to stop the apples sticking and ripping off the bottom of the caramel from the apple

also the first time i tried to decorate my apples i found that the caramel set so quickly that i didn't have a chance to get my sprinkles on them so i left them for a bit to set properly and then gently re heated the left over caramel and used a teaspoon to dribble fresh hot wet caramel in the places i wanted to decorate and just try and work quickly.  Be careful thought caramel is very hot and sticky and will hold fast to your skin and burn it.

With the left over caramel i made caramel pennies with them don't make the mistake i did with the first batch and stack them on top of each other when they set as they are still very sticky, make sure you individually wrap them up in cling film

My last tip for clean the pan don't worry about scrubbing it just fill it with water and put back on the hob to heat up and all the sugar melts away

Hope you have a cracking bonfire night.