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Black Candy Apples Recipe
Swap out traditional red and go black with these frightfully delicious candy apples.
Photo by Melissa Caughey
With fall comes apple-picking season and few things are better than a day spent picking apples, exploring the orchard or sipping apple cider. There is nothing like the taste of freshly-picked apples.
Once home, apples fill the lunchboxes. We also turn them into wonderful apple pies, apple tarts, add them to our turkey dinner's stuffing and even indulge in making candy apples.
Homemade candy apples are much easier to make than you would think. We are accustomed to seeing them glazed in red candy, but you can change the candy into any color you prefer with the help of food coloring. Only a few ingredients are required, the most important item being a candy thermometer.
When working with melted sugar, temperature is very key to getting recipes correct. Whether it is taffy, peanut brittle or candy apples, you must remove the sugar from heat at exactly the right moment to get the texture, hardness and setting of the candy to go just right. In the case of candy apples, the sugar will need to simmer for almost 30 minutes to achieve the temperature of 300 degrees F. This is the point of "hard crack."
This year, I wanted to add a fun element of surprise to our candy apples. I turned them black for instant drama and an air of mystery. Instead of using traditional lollipop or popsicle sticks, I used branches from one of our maple trees. (Birch and fruit tree branches are also safe to use.) These are sure to be a hit at our next fall get-together.
Here is what you will need to get started:
Yield: 8 candy apples
- 2 cups white sugar
- 1 cup of water
- 3/4 cup of light corn syrup
- Black sugar sprinkles
- Black food coloring
- 8 sticks, twigs or small branches
- Candy thermometer
- Cookie sheet
- Parchment paper
- Cooking spray
Take a peek below to see the entire gallery with photos and captions that show the step-by-step directions to create these candy apples.
Black Candy Apples How-To
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Tips for success:
- You will need to work quickly with the sugar mixture. You will only have minutes to coat the apples.
- An extra set of hands comes in handy.
- Use extreme caution when handling the hot sugar—contact with the mixture can cause a nasty burn.
- The sugar mixture comes off easily with a soak in hot soapy water.
- This recipe can be doubled.
