Maple Candied Apples

With fall resolutely in place, and Halloween looming ever so close, I wanted to make something special with my children, that I think you’ll enjoy making with yours too: Maple Candied Apples.

Part of cooking is building culinary tradition – creating something that you can pass down from one generation to the next.  The foods we share with our families do more than simply nourish us; rather, they tell our stories too. Stories of connection, joy and celebration.  Stories that mark the seasons, too.

Like baking cookies on Christmas eve, or toasting pumpkin seeds on Halloween, the way we take pleasure in and experience the joy of cooking with our families can become part of the story we tell.

In the Pacific Northwest, apples positively drip from the trees in the fall.  They line side streets and litter yards and alleyways.  Trees in groups and orchards, and half-forgotten lonely trees, too.  They’re there for the picking, to press into cider, to stew in sauces, and to dip into hot maple for Maple Candied Apples.

One more tradition to share with your children in a fleeting season.

How Maple Candied Apples Are Different

Most candied apples are made with refined white sugar, corn syrup, artificial food dye and flavorings. These ingredients, simmered together, make for a vivid red glasslike crackly crunch that coats candied apples.  Typically, this candy coating is cooked on the stove top until it reaches the hard crack stage, at about 300 F, when the sugars turn brittle.

To make these Maple Candied Apples, you’ll heat maple syrup and sugar together with soft apple cider until the deep and resonant aroma of toffee develops.  Then dip the apples into the hot sugar.  As it cools, you’ll have all the rich flavor of maple and apple blended together – no dyes, no flavorings and nothing artificial.

Maple syrup and sugar, which is rich in antioxidants and other flavor components, can burn when heated to the elevated temperatures needed to make regular candied apples.  Instead, you’ll want to heat the candy coating to the hard ball stage, at about 255 F, a considerably lower temperature than that needed for regular candied apples.  This temperature maintains a rich flavor, without over cooking the delicate natural sugars and flavor components you find in maple. Keep a careful eye on your candy thermometer, so that you don’t overheat the sugar.  You can test the temperature and stage of candy making without a thermometer, by dropping a spoonful of the boiling sugar into a cold glass of water. If you can form it into a soft and malleable ball, it’s ready.

Plan to serve these candied apples the day you make them.  While most candied apples store well, maple candied apples do not – partially because the sugar used to make them is heated to a lower temperature.

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