Ooey-Gooey Caramel Apples

We have apples coming out of our ears.  

For real. 

You can read all about our apple picking adventures here.  For some reason I always say we're not going to get that many apples this year...

And then we wind up with gobs and gobs of apples.  Budget fail!  Because they always go bad, ya know?  It really is true that one bad apple ruins the whole bunch...

Anyway, so I've been trying to use up these dern apples and I decided to just go for broke and make something super nutritious...

Caramel apples.  Which sounded super easy until I realized I have never made them.  So here's what I came up with and what I learned along the way...

Crock-Pot SCCPVC605-S 6-Quart Countdown Oval Slow Cooker with Dipper, Stainless Steel

I made my caramel sauce in the slow cooker.  I found a bowl that fit in my crockpot that still had room around it so I could lift it out.  I am sure this will be different for everyone so just mess with your bowls until you can find one that works for you. 

And by the way if you need a crockpot you can buy the same one I have on Amazon.  And right now it looks like it's on sale for 45% off for only $29.99.  You can click here to check it out. Deal!

Anyway, I then opened up the two bags of caramels that I bought at the store.  I got about half way through unwrapping one when I got this great idea and called in the kids to finish the rest.  I have no idea how many they ate.  I decided to turn a blind eye and not judge them. 

Anyway, a few minutes and a ton of wrappers later they were done and all of the caramels were ready to go. 

I then poured water carefully AROUND the bowl (not in the bowl).  You have to play around with this too.  I think I ended up with about 6 cups of water.  I say I think because I dumped a bunch of water in there and then when the bowl began to float I had to take some out.  As difficult as caramel apples are I didn't want to complicate things by having to follow a bobbing bowl around in the water. 

I then turned my slow cooker to high and let it go.  I stirred it about every half an hour to see how it was coming along.  My caramel took about two hours to get soft enough to dunk apples into.  The photo is what it looked like when it was time to dip.  I posted that one to show you what it should look like.  I didn't think it would be ready but upon completion of stirring it was ready and we were thrilled! 

I dipped the apples just as a precaution but the caramel didn't get too hot so I probably could have let the kiddos.  But safety first!  As you can see I used popsicle sticks and just jammed them in there about half way through the core.  None fell out which was good.  And no one had kabob skewers to try to impale each other with so even better! 

I would like to point out that these caramel apples are not what you would call "magazine perfect" but they are what you could call "kid perfect" because they helped and loved them and to me that's all that matters.  And besides who doesn't like an apple with ooey-gooey caramel running down the sides?

We dipped half of the apples in sprinkles and the other half left bare. I was thinking nuts but we had these when we had new friends over and I wasn't sure about nut allergies.  So maybe nuts would work next time.  I'm also posting these AFTER Halloween because I thought that chopping up leftover candy and using it as a topping would be a really great idea!  

My mother hen piece of advice here is to make sure you really scrape down the bottoms of your apples before you put them on the wax paper.  The caramel will ooze that way as God dictated that's how gravity works, so only scraping a wee bit off results in this big boogery end.  Which is just all caramel and sprinkles which can't be totally bad, right?

Oh and I thought that was my last bit of advice but it wasn't.  Make sure you spray your wax paper with a cooking spray.  We did not and on some of the apples I was stuck (get it? ha!) trying to pick wax paper pieces off of the apples.  Not so fun.  

I hope you enjoy making your own ooey-gooey caramel apples!  

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Apple Picking 2015

These are the moments that I try to shove into the deep recesses of my mind so when I am old I can remember them.  I am so thankful for things like blogs so I can jot down the details of the day along with all of the wonderful photos and try to remember the time when they are this small.  I love these two children so much.  They fill my life with such joy.  

We go apple picking every year.  This year however was the first year that we went during October.  Picking apples in October apparently is very lame as there were hardly any apples.  But we learned our lesson and from now on will make sure that we go in September.  Before apple picking we always travel all the way to Bonneyville Mill for a picnic and some football.  

They have the most gorgeous Dahlia garden.  Seriously, out of a dream or something.  So of course I love taking pictures of our little lady with her little lady.  Can I please just bottle this age up of carrying a doll around in a sweet dress? I am sure I will blink and it will be gone.  This sweet girl and her happy heart captivate me.  I love being her Momma. 

And in a stark contrast from the sweet girl in a flower garden is the rowdy boy having fun climbing all over an old dam.  I love his adventurous spirit although most of the time it makes me feel like my stomach is up in my throat and I am suffocating.  But I am learning to let go and try to watch him have fun exploring.  

If you ever get the chance to go to this mill when it is operating you have to go.  You just have to.  Built in 1832 it's incredible that it is still working.  They have the cutest store that we buy our cornmeal from every year.  The photo above is the chute of the cornmeal coming out from the stone. 

There were these darling old bags and promotional items posted up from back in the day.  I thought they were so neat.  

After that we left the park and made our way to the orchards. 

These two are the apples of my eye...ey?  ey?  Ya get that? 

For the past few years I've been able to say "okay, bucket heads" and they've put their buckets on their heads.  But this year it was aparently cooler to shove his sisters bucket on her head than to put the bucket on his head.  

<sigh> it's the end of an era...

This year it was nice that they wanted to use the grabby stick thing because up high was about the only place that we could find apples :(  Boo.  

Success at last!  This seriously felt like it took forever!  Forever, Jerry! And can I please just have her clothes in my size?  So stinking cute! 

And then there's this guy.  He is such a goof.  Which I love.  He thoroughly enjoys going before me and looking for ways to make me laugh.  That or ways to make me freak out.  Either way he's looking out for my entertainment benefit.  I guess I will choose to look at it that way.  

Is there anything more peace inducing than to take the time to look at an apple and it's leaves.  It's such an amazing thing that God created because He loves us.  It just takes my breath away and I love sharing this type of thing with our kids.  The way that the star is formed inside the apple, all of the varieties, the way they grow on the tree, it all is just simply amazing.  

This is all we picked this year.  One reason because all they had were the "delicious" varieties which I tend to not find so delicious.  Another reason was that you could see these were heavily sprayed.  And the third reason being that Meijer has apples on sale for 59 cents this week and these puppies were 85 cents.  We got this amount for the memories, thank you. 

Have y'all gone and done your apple picking?  Were you late this year like we were or did you go earlier?  I'm curious is apples were in short supply this year or if it was because we were a week later than we normally are.  

Happy Fall, Y'all!