How do you make toffee apples? Here’s a simple recipe for making homemade ones for Halloween

For many of us, toffee apples are a classic Halloween treat, and can be customised in a whole variety of ways using different toppings and food colouring.

However, the thought of making our own caramel at home is a pretty daunting undertaking for most, especially if you don’t have the help of a sugar thermometer.

This is how to make the perfect Halloween toffee apples at home, without the need for any fancy equipment.

How to make toffee apples

Recipe from BBC Good Food

You’ll need the following ingredients for your toffee apples:

• Eight red apples
• 400g caster sugar
• One teaspoon of lemon juice
• Four tablespoons of golden syrup
• Red or back food colouring (optional)
• Red or black edible glitter (optional)

You’ll also need eight lolly sticks or forks to stick into the end of the apples.

Method

Begin by securing the apples to your sticks by wedging them into the stalk end of the apple, making sure it’s in there firmly.

Place a large piece of baking parchments onto a wooden board.

In a large saucepan, add your sugar, lemon juice and 100ml of water and bring to a simmer - cook until the sugar has dissolved.

You can swirl the pan gently to move the sugar around, but don’t stir it with a spoon.

Add the golden syrup and bubble the mixture, ensuring that it doesn’t boil over. You want to do this until it reaches something called the “hard crack” stage, which would be 150C on a sugar thermometer.

However, there are ways to check if your toffee is at the right stage without a special sugar thermometer - simply get a small bowl of water and drop some of your toffee into it.

If the toffee hardens instantly and, when removed from the water, becomes brittle, then it’s ready.

If the toffee is soft, then you should continue to boil it.

Once your toffee is ready, add some food colouring of your choice if you want, and same with the glitter, and turn off the heat.

You’ll need to move quickly at this stage, but ensure that you’re being careful.

Using the sticks, dip each apple into your toffee mixture, manoeuvring the pan to cover all of the surface area of the apple.

Once covered, remove the apple from the toffee and allow any of the excess mixture to drop off before placing it on your parchment paper.

Repeat with your remaining apples and gently reheat your toffee mixture again if you need to.

Once you’ve done all your apples, leave them to cool before eating, preferably in a cool, dry place.