In the fall, especially as Halloween gets closer, candy apples are a popular treat—and they’re easy to make at home, too. The colorful apples coated in a shiny candy glaze look great on the table, and kids love licking and biting into them.
The candy coating is basically pure sugar, so this is definitely not something you could call healthy—but at least there’s an apple underneath. And anyway, may this be the most sugar a kid ever eats in their life.
If you do nothing else for Halloween, if you don’t feel like baking, cooking, or decorating, candy apples are a very easy but spectacular treat to make.
How to Make Candy Apples
Making candy apples is very simple—see the detailed recipe below. Essentially, you dip the apples in a candy coating colored with food coloring, and that’s it.
Red is the most common color, but really, your imagination is the only limit. For a spooky Halloween decoration, for example, black “poisoned” apples are a great idea, and they’re sure to be a hit with kids.
It’s Hard Without a Candy Thermometer
You should know that working with heated sugar is not the easiest task. First, be very careful with it; it really is unbelievably hot and can burn you badly. Second, to get the right result, we need a candy coating with the right texture.
Heated sugar has different stages—how it behaves after cooling depends on what temperature it was heated to. Here, though, it’s very sensitive; even a 9–18°F (5–10°C) difference can give you a different texture. For candy apples, you need what’s called the hard-crack stage. This is what makes the outside of the apple crunchy, brittle, and relatively easy to bite into.
You can measure this accurately almost only with a kitchen thermometer, which you may also find called a candy thermometer. This is the simplest solution, and with it you can determine the sugar’s temperature precisely. You need 300–310°F (149–154°C); that’s when the syrup is ready.
It is possible to check the candy coating’s stage without a thermometer, too. When you drop a small amount into cold water, you should get brittle threads at this stage. I wouldn’t try this method, though, unless you have a lot of experience making caramel, so definitely get a kitchen thermometer!
Candy Apples
Equipment
- 6 wooden sticks
- candy thermometer kitchen thermometer
Ingredients
- 2 cups sugar 400 g
- ⅓ cup plus 1 tbsp glucose syrup 130 g, or corn syrup
- ⅔ cup water 150 ml
- 6 apples
- 12 drops food coloring any color you like
Instructions
- To make the candy apples, first place the apples on a baking sheet or tray lined with parchment paper, and insert a stick into the core of each one.If you wash the apples, dry them thoroughly.
- For the candy coating, put the sugar, glucose syrup, and water in a small saucepan and start cooking. Heat over medium to medium-high heat until the thermometer reads 300–310°F (149–154°C). At that point, immediately remove it from the heat; do not let it cook any longer.After the sugar has melted, do not stir it at all. If sugar starts crystallizing on the side of the pan, you can wipe it down with a wet pastry brush.How long it takes the sugar to reach the right temperature depends on the stove, too, but it will not be quick. For me, it took about 35 minutes.
- Add the food coloring and stir it in. If the sugar starts setting while you are working, put it back over medium heat for a little while.If you want a stronger color, you can add a little more food coloring.If you are making the apples in several colors, use a separate pan for each color.
- Holding the apples by the sticks, dip them one by one into the sugar mixture so the colored coating covers them completely. Place them on the parchment paper and let them cool completely.When dipping, work confidently: not rushed, but fairly quickly, so the sugar layer does not get too thick. Tilt the saucepan slightly, put in the apple, and turn it so the coating covers it as well as possible around the stick. Take it out of the saucepan and keep slowly turning it until the excess drips off.
