These days everything is more expensive than it should be. It's enough to make me even grumpier. But I know of one exception: caramel apples. There is good reason why it costs $3.00 or $4.00 for an apple, a little caramel, no nuts and a stick. The reason is that caramel apples are in the category of Things You Do Not Want To Ever Make Yourself. Herein lies a tale......
My First Mistake
My grocery store had a good sale on apples, but no sheet-caramel in stock. You know, those packages of flat caramel rounds that you drape over the apple, put in a warm oven for a few minutes, and then use your hands to wrap and weld the sheet to the apple because it didn't wrap and weld by itself like the package said it would.
So I bought a bag of caramels with printed directions on the side for caramel apples and 5 sticks (thankfully only 5) inside. That evening, after only a couple of hours spent unwrapping 42 caramels, I plopped them into a pan. I didn't have a microwave, being one of the last holdouts from the Stone Age when women cooked on stoves, so I set the pan over another of boiling water.
First I added a scant two tablespoons of water to the caramels, just as the bag told me to. That was my second mistake. Then I stirred as they melted and, when that didn't work out too well, I left them alone until they were soft enough that a heavy serving utensil and a lot of brute force could meld "them" into an "it" - caramel sauce.
Swirling each apple by turn until they were beautifully coated, I set them on a buttered sheet of waxed paper as instructed, and washed the unreachable part of the sauce (about half of it) away from the pans, the sink, the utensils, the stove, the floor, and my elbows. It took a long time. I missed the entire debut of the Fall TV season. But the one caramel apple I ate was sure a treat.
It might have worked out better if I'd had four guests to eat the other apples, but I did not. It also might have been better if I had refrigerated them, but I did not.
Day Two
The second evening, as I uncovered the apples to have another, it was hard to get the cover off the cake plate. I soon learned why. There sat the apples, red skins showing through a silken glaze, in 4 pools of caramel which ran down, as I watched, into the ridges of the plate.
Not to be done out of my apple, I spent a half hour extracting one from the pools and rebuilding sticky sauce onto it with my fingers, several knives, and a few well-chosen words. It was a little lumpy and uneven, but still tasted good. After I ate it, I washed up the sink, the utensils and the cake plate cover, replaced it, and hoped for the best. Then I undressed, stuffed my clothes and all the kitchen towels in the hamper, took a bath and washed my hair.
Day Three
The third night, somewhat less in the mood for a caramel apple, I uncovered them in their pools, which had widened considerably with the addition of a little escaped apple juice. I just tore the paper with most of a pool, took it with the apple and a blunt knife, stuck a towel in my neck and sat down over newspaper to eat it the best I could. By then the paper was soft enough to chew easily with the rest of it.
Then, figuring better late than never, I plunked the remainder of the mess (two apples) in the fridge. That way I could soak and wash the cake plate, along with the sink, the chair, my arms and my face. I wouldn't have washed my hair again, except that's the only way I could get the blunt knife out of it.
Day Four
The fourth night my two remaining treats were cold and hard. But not so hard that I couldn't fold the flat pool of caramel down around and form a properly shaped caramel apple, sort of like a lump of clay. Granted, waxed paper doesn't taste as good when it's cold, but I was a bit short of patience by then. It took longer to chew, being cold, and was not easy on my teeth, which had been bothering me for a few days for some reason.
But it didn't take nearly as long to clean up. After blowing my nose enough, I did have to soak my eyeglasses in warm water for a while, but that was my own fault. By then I should have known to take them off.
Day Five
Well, there was one left on the fifth evening, and I could see a big bad spot on it through the glassy glaze, so I got a sharp knife to cut the spot out. It was hard, sticky, slippery and dribbly all at the same time. After I stopped the spurting blood and got my finger bandaged, I threw the whole mess in the trash. I didn't suppose it would be a good idea to put caramel down the garbage disposal and listen to it grind it up but, oh my, I sure wanted to.
Congratulating myself on my good sense, I opened the fridge to find a safer snack. That's when I saw the hardened caramel that had slithered through the shelves all the way to the bottom. It was rather a long evening. For some reason, things continue to to stick to the shelves in there to this day.
In closing (which I think is the best idea now):
I do like to be helpful occasionally, so I want to pass on my best advice: never complain if you have to pay $4.00 for a caramel apple.
It's worth it.
Thanks for reading.
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