Trick or boo! Who doesn’t LOVE a candy apple? They can be messy but hands down are fun! These little ghosts are made with a basic cooked candy recipe with white food coloring. I didn’t know how well white food coloring worked until I tried making edible seashells for a wedding cake. These ghost candy apples are actually pretty simple to make. I was going to make cherry candy apples, but since I had white food coloring, black string, and eyeballs on hand I thought of ghosts. To be honest, I was searching the cabinet for the cherry candy flavoring when the white food color fell right out at me….light-bulb!
This is one of those recipes that preparing properly will help it go easy and smooth. You will need a few things:
Candy Thermometer
High Heat Spatula
Lollipop Sticks
Edible candy eyeballs
White Food Coloring
Black Edible Marker
2 qt saucepan
cookie sheet
parchment paper
non-stick cooking spray
What you need to do is have everything ready, place the pan on the stove, line baking sheet with lined with parchment paper, spray spatula, and measuring cup with non-stick spray. It may take 20 minutes or more to heat the candy to the temperature. Once you remove from heat and add food coloring you have to be quick, coat all the apples before it cools too much, and starts to thicken. Have all the apples with the sticks in them lined up and ready. Once I dip them I place on a prepared baking sheet, when I am all done add eyes then let set in freezer or fridge for a few minutes to set. Don’t leave in the refrigerator too long, just to help them cool and set. Or, you can simply let them sit at room temperature until set.
Candy apples can be hard, to test to make sure the candy portion came out right, I either break off a small piece from the bottom and try it or pour a tiny amount onto the parchment paper to test. This will make sure the candy reached the proper temperature and won’t hurt anyone’s teeth.
Candy Apples
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Total Time: 60 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 cups sugar
- 2/3 cup corn syrup
- 3/4 cup water
- a few drops of white food coloring.
Instructions
- Get everything ready ahead of time
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and lightly spray with cooking spray, set aside. Attach candy thermometer to medium saucepan so that the tip will be submerged into liquid and not touching bottom of pan.
- Spray measuring cup and spatula with non-stick cooking spray.
- Wash and dry apples and stick a the stick through the stem.
- Place sugar, water, and corn syrup into saucepan mix and turn heat to medium heat. Bring mixture to a low simmer, slowly turn heat up between medium and medium/high heat.
- Watching carefully, wait for the mixture to rise to 300 degrees.This may take more than 20 minutes. Each oven is different you may need to raise stove top temp a tiny bit. Dont cook too fast, sugar will burn easily.
- Once mixture reaches 300 degrees, remove from heat and stir in food coloring.
- Carefully dip apples into the pan with mixture spinning them around to coat well. Immediately place on parchment paper lined basking sheet.
- Place eyeballs on apples once out of the mixture so make sure they stick. If you wait to long and the apple cool and dry too much they will not stick.
- Allow apples to cool and dry completely before serving. You can place in the freezer or refrigerator for a few minutes to help set the candy.
- Tie a bow on the stick at the top of the apple. Using and edible marker, draw a tiny mouth under the eyes.
Notes
The candy temperature needs to reach 300 degrees, the hard crack stage. If the temperature does not reach 300 degrees the candy may be too sticky to eat and can stick to your teeth.
If you don’t have an edible marker they look pretty good with just eyes.
Although, adding the edible marker does give it a little more personality.
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How adorable!!! My kids would love these!
★★★★★