Bacon Caramel Apples

Wooo, baby! It has been so long since I’ve visited you guys b/c I have been travelling for work for the last 2 months. It was 2 months of eating out in the middle of nowhere Indiana and in the center of lively Chicago. My meal experiences ranged from blah to fantastic, and I mastered the art of dining alone. When you travel alone, you become more of an observer.  Anonymity in a large city makes for a comfortable cloak leaving you free to extend your relationship with the city itself.

Those two months on the road left me yearning to get back in the kitchen to whip up some of my own damn food. While travelling, I had had the idea to make bacon caramel apples while biting into a very delicious traditional candied apple. This weekend, being my first weekend home, I could not wait to try out my idea! I had the feeling that the salty/sweet, sticky/crunchy, rich/fresh combination of all those ingredients would make for an awesome fall flavor explosion. And boy was I right! Behold the beauty below

 

Ok, so it’s really not that beautiful, but as we all know, true beauty lies on the inside, and one bite of this treat will tell you it is truly a beautiful world we live in when you can put bacon on everything!

I definitely need to work on my bacon rolling technique, but check the recipe below to make yourself one of these most awesome apples!

 

Ingredients:

• 1 bag soft caramels
• 1/4 cup milk, cream, or half n half (I used fat free half & half b/c that is all I had in the house)
• 2 apples (I used granny smith here for the extra tartness)
• 8 strips of bacon

Steps:

1. Lay out some parchment paper or greased foil to hold your apples
2. Cook your bacon to very crispy. My favorite method is to take a plate, line with paper towel, lay the strips down in one layer. You can probably do up to 2 layers of paper towel & bacon. Pop the plate in the microwave for about 5-7 min depending on how crispy you like your bacon. In this case, make it CRISPY!
3. In a pot, heat to medium and toss in unwrapped caramels & milk. Stir until the caramels are melted and you have a dippable consistency.
4. One the bacon has cooled some, chop it up into little bacon bits.
5. Stick a skewer (or chopstick!) in the top of your apple and dip it in the caramel, rolling around until the apple is well coated.
6. Roll your caramel apple in the bacon bits till it is well covered and set the apple on your parchment paper to cool
7. That’s it! You now have bacony, caramelly, appley goodness on a stick!

(Photo credits all go to my girl Jen V. !)