A decidedly delicious and wickedly good treat. Who can resist the allure of a shiny red candy apple? While Pommes d’Amour, the famous French candy ‘love’ apple, conjures visions of delight it also makes for a surprsingly sinister Halloween confection.
I named my blog ‘Pommes d’Amour” twenty years ago after the tantalizing eye popping candy apples I would oogle in the Paris patisserie windows on my way to work. Now here I am, Stateside, a lifetime later, with two little girls and a garden filled with apple trees and I’m actually making the recipe! Full circle finally.
I grow a unique apple called Pink Pearl. No doubt if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time you have seen these pink fleshed beauties in my other recipes. It is my favorite. My Mother-in-Law says that these apples are called “blood apples” in Iran, so I find it quite fitting for Halloween.
This is an easy recipe and a fun one. But as a longtime cooking teacher, I must warn, making the candy part of this is not a job for little kids and I personally asked Layla to sit on the other side of our kitchen island and I did not make this recipe with my ever curious toddler Hettie, because she simply does not understand the word ‘No’ or ‘Danger’. In fact, those two words often have the exact opposite effect.
Layla and I picked the last of our Pink Pearls, trimmed our tree and cleaned some branches, we jammed those branches into the tops of our apples and measured our ingredients. I cooked the sugar concoction (alone) to 310˚F and then dipped the apples in as fast as possible before the sugar could set. Seriously easy!
There are options for the flavor and color. We made two batches: in one I used just red gel paste for eye popping scarlet magpie appeal. In the other batch I added a touch of black for a more wicked look. Aside from the lemon juice if you want a little more kick, you can add red hot candies for a bit of cinnamon heat!
Happy Halloween friends! Hope there’s more treats in your bag than tricks!
Ingredients
- 6 apples that sit up right easily
- 6 apple branches trimmed or 6 sticks of choice
- 3 cups granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup corn syrup
- 1 cup water
- 1/8 teaspoon red gel paste
- a tiny touch of black gel paste if desired
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
First find 6 beautiful apples that can stand up-right on their own. Clean, dry and twist off stem. Plunge a trimmed and cleaned small tree branch in the top or use a stick of at least 1/4-inch in diameter. Set apples aside.
Prepare a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
In a high sided pot, add sugar, corn syrup, water and food color. Gently whisk trying very carefully not to splash the sugar mixture all up and down the sides of the pot. It is much easier to add the food coloring ahead of time than aferwards.
Place the pot over medium heat with a candy thermometer and simmer until the temperature is 300-310˚F reaching the hard crack sugar stage. You will also see that the bubbles start to "blub blub" slower that the earlier frenetic soft ball bubbles. Once the hard crack stage has been reached, remove the pot a separate burner off the heat and add the lemon juice – it will splatter so be careful.
One by one, swirl the apples into the sugar mixture and place back on the baking sheet. Let cook for at least 20 minutes to fully set.
Enjoy! (people with fillings, be careful!)
