Everyone who cooks knows that sometimes things go wrong in the kitchen. Sometimes, we can figure out why. "Oh yeah, I did leave out the salt." Sometimes, the recipe we follow is at fault (I find mistakes in lots of online recipes). Sometimes we don't know what happened. I always try to salvage cooking mistakes, especially ones with expensive ingredients or ingredients I don't use a lot, but sometimes you can't.
Today was a day when I'm not sure what happened, but I managed to salvage it. I wanted to make caramel apples for a potluck tomorrow. I've made caramel apples before, but I saw a recipe on a blog that used maple syrup and sounded delicious. Since I've made them before, I decided to try it and I didn't plan a back up recipe. Big mistake! Using a new recipe for a potluck is a bad idea.
Anyway, I followed the instructions and yum, it looked delicious, but I did kind of thing it used a lot of butter. I didn't think it would ever come together, but it eventually did.
However, even after cooling for hours, this is what my apples looked like.
Nothing I would ever bring to a potluck. Yuck! It just never got thick enough. I even put it in the fridge and it was
still sloshy. I sliced this one and ate it. The caramel tasted
divine. I didn't want to throw it away (plus, I don't normally keep
sugar or flour around, so I didn't have anything else to make without
going to to the store).
It was like this was destined to happen. My mom just bought me a crockpot with three bowls (for dips) last month. I hadn't even opened it yet. Since the caramel was a great dip, I decided to crack that baby open and put caramel in two bowls and some warm water with a squirt bottle to drizzle chocolate in the other. I filled one of my fall bowls with peanuts and I was set.
The real problem with this idea is that the apples need to be sliced and sliced apples turn brown. I think everyone knows the trick to squirt lemon juice (yucky flavor) or lime juice (better flavor) on them to prevent them from turning. I use citric acid. I can and make cheese, so I always have a little citric acid on hand. It's a powder. If you dissolved a teaspoon in a cup of water, you can just soak the apples that liquid for a minute or two and they won't brown for a few days, give or take. In my experience, it works better than lemon or lime juice (the citric acid is what makes those citric fruits work too). I think because I literally dunk the entire slice in it and I never really have enough lime juice to do that. Plus, I can't taste the citric acid on the apples at all. If you lick the actual powder, it tastes like a lemon. The use it sour candy for the sour flavor.
