Cat-amel Apples (Gluten free, Vegan)
For Halloween (or just because you like cats), why not make these wonderful witchy cat toffee apples!? Cats are a witch’s favourite broomstick companion, and just all round cute furry friend. If you follow me on Instagram you’ll be very familiar with my cats Ziggy and Nova, so I just couldn’t resist these!
These would be great to make with kids, but the caramel gets incredibly hot so you will want an adult handling the saucepan at all times.
Now if you’re looking for soft caramel, this isn’t for you, these are proper Halloween “almost break your teeth” toffee apples. But that’s the way you get the lovely smooth finish with the eerily black toffee.
Tip: if you leave off the whiskers and make the ears bigger, you’d have Bat-amel apples!
If you make my Cat-amel Apples I’d love to see. You can find me on Instagram @the.gfg.
Ingredients
6 Granny Smith apples
360g granulated sugar
150ml water
100g liquid glucose
Few drops black food colouring
6 bamboo skewers
To decorate:
Sugar eyes
Black ready to roll icing
Pink ready to roll icing (or white icing and a little red food colouring)
20g icing sugar
Method
Insert the bamboo skewers into the apples through the core (pushing far enough through that the apple can be held by the stick, but not all the way through) and leave to one side on a sheet of baking paper.
Make the cat ears by rolling out your black ready to roll icing, cutting out 12 triangles and pinching the bottom two corners together a little.
Prepare your cat noses by rolling little balls out of the pink ready to roll icing (these will need to be smaller than you might think).
In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, water, liquid glucose and black food colouring. Stir over a medium heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.
Turn up the heat and allow the caramel to boil until it reaches 150°C on a candy thermometer (if you don't have a candy thermometer, you're looking for the "hard crack" stage - a little caramel dropped in cold water will form brittle threads that break when bent).
When the caramel is ready (it will be incredibly hot!), turn the heat off and carefully tilt the saucepan to the side. Holding an apple by the skewer, coat in the caramel. You may need to lift the apples up over the saucepan to drip off the excess and roll a few times to ensure an even coating. If the caramel gets too hard you may need to turn the heat back on for a few seconds.
Place the apples back onto the baking paper.
To stick the eyes, ears and nose to the cat-amel apples, dip a stick/skewer into the caramel and use this as adhesive. Be very careful here.
For the whiskers, add just a few drops of water to the icing sugar to make a thick icing, and pipe the whiskers on using a piping bag with a very small hole cut into the end.
Enjoy! X
