THE BEST CARAMEL APPLES

A favorite treat in our house is caramel apples. We especially love to make them in the fall when fresh apples are locally available. The real secret to the best caramel apples is home-made caramel! Here’s the recipe we use:

Ingredients

Caramel (single batch will do about 5-6 apples) • 1 stick salted butter • 1 cup Karo syrup • 2 cups (packed) brown sugar • 1 can sweetened condensed milk

Other • Apples, of course! (We like the sweet/tart combo of Honeycrisp) • Flat popsicle sticks - stabbed into the apples to spin in the caramel • White chocolate, cinnamon-sugar, oreos, mini M&Ms, chopped nuts, or other favorite toppings.

Directions

Melt the butter into the Karo and add the brown sugar. Once boiling, add the sweetened condensed milk slowly so the mix keeps boiling. The knack is to know how much to heat the caramel so that it is the right consistency. Boil it for only a minute or two and it stays too soft to hold form on the apple--but this is perfect for caramel popcorn! If you cook it too long, it can get too hard when it sets. I like to test the caramel as it is cooking by dropping some (a teaspoon or two is enough) into a bowl of ice water. Once it cools enough to handle, you can grab it to get a good idea of how firm the caramel will be when it sets. Simply heat the caramel until the cooled droppings are the right firmness for you. Now the hard part is done! While you set the caramel aside to cool, you can prep the apples and other toppings. We prep the apples by washing and towel drying them. The towel drying is especially useful to remove any retail wax polishing so the caramel will stick better. I like to use flat popsicle sticks rather than round. The round sticks tend to spin in the apple when you are turning the apple in the caramel. We use parchment paper on cookie sheets to rest the apples on. This way, you can easily peel the caramel off the parchment, once the caramel is cooled. When dipping the apples in the caramel, I like to use a rubber spatula to wipe off the caramel on the lower sides and the bottom of the apple. The caramel will settle some and re-cover the area. If it’s cool enough you can set the apples outside for the caramel to set, otherwise have some space ready in the fridge. Once the caramel is set on the apple, if some forming of the caramel is needed, you can use a little cooking spray on your hand to help from sticking to the caramel.

If you are adding any toppings directly on the caramel, do it before the caramel sets to be sure they stick to the caramel--unless you are doing a layer of chocolate. In that case you’ll want the caramel to be completely cooled and set, then the melted chocolate will layer, instead of mixing with the caramel. When the chocolate is still warm/soft, add any other toppings you’d like, our favorite is cinnamon-sugar.

Pardoning the Thanksgiving Turkey

By Diana Juarez

Pardoning of the Turkey has become an American tradition every Thanksgiving. But where did it come from?

where did the pardoning of the turkey come from? Though it was George H.W Bush who officially initiated this tradition, Abraham Lincoln actually helped start this trend in 1863 when pardoning the turkey for a christmas dinner. Since then, a few presidents have spared the turkeys as dinner. The formalities of pardoning a turkey gelled by 1989 when H.W Bush, assured us that the turkey would live out his days on a childrens farm near the white house. (I’m sure the animal rights activists picketing nearby helped make this tradition come to life). Since then, turkeys across the United States have rejoiced, at least one day a year as the leaders have spared a lucky bird from the Thanksgiving table. • Minnesota raises the most birds in the United States.

Minnesotan farmers produce around 40 - 42 million turkeys a year.

• 2012 was the first time

Americans could vote online to choose which bird got the presidential pardon.

• From 2005 to 2009, the turkeys were flown to either

Disneyland or Disney World to be the grand marshal of the Thanksgiving Day parade.

• The first female turkey to be pardoned received the reprieve from President

George W. Bush in 2002.