No Use Crying Over Burnt Caramel

Ever since Mama Pea posted about making vegan caramel apples, it has been practically all I have thought about. Mostly just trying to come up with a place where I could share caramel apples since I really didn't need to be eating an entire one much less 4. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. My obsession actually goes back a bit further. A few months ago someone in my office brought in a chile covered caramel apple and was sharing it with people. I know, sharing a caramel apple? She ingeniously used an apple corer/slicer to cut the thing into 8 wedges that were then sharable. Genius, right? I commented how utterly genius I thought that was and how utterly useless that bit of information was going to be to me as I would likely never eat a caramel apple again. Fast forward to October 12th and Mama Pea posted this. It was like all my dreams had come true. Oh, except for the one where I actually had a reason to make 4 whole caramel apples.

Then the Halloween potluck at my work occurred and I thought it a perfect opportunity to try. I bought my candy thermometer and had all my ingredients. I got to working on making some dinner and my aforementioned hummus platter and before I knew it, it was 8:30 the night before the pot luck. I decided I was setting myself up for disaster if I attempted to make temperamental candy an hour and a half before I should be in bed. So I patiently waited. But not so patiently that I didn't attempt it the next day. I had all my ingredients all laid out.

I wasn't trying to multi task (which is what I almost always do in the kitchen). I was focused, I was prepared. And you know what happened? I overcooked the caramel. I do not know what happened. Everything was going fine until I got to the step that said cook for 9-11 minutes. At about 5 or 6 minutes in I started to think it looked too dark. I stuck my candy thermometer in and it immediately shot up to over 250 degrees when the whole thing was only supposed to get to 235. I knew I was going to have hard caramel but I tried it anyway. I took it off the burner and immediately dipped my apples.

The first one looked ok, but by the third one, the caramel started getting clumpy and I knew I was done. I tried to cut the first apple.

But the slicer wouldn't go through the caramel. So I used a knife that mostly cut through it ok. But the caramel was way too hard. I had failed. The only thing I can think is that Mama Pea's pot might have been thicker than mine and thus heated more slowly.  Oh well, sometimes you have to live with disappointments, right? But now what to do with the one sliced and 2 caramel covered apples? I pried off the failed caramel and the skins were a little cooked from the heat. So I decided to slice them up and make these.

 Apple Chips! Based on the recipe posted here from Oh She Glows. They took forever to dehydrate and they never really got chipy but they are definitely delicious!

A Bit of a Let Down

I ended up pausing the dehydrating last night so that I could go to bed.  I resumed this morning with much anticipation but was a little disappointed at how hot the dehydrator seemed to be running.  Last night I watched a Good Eats video on youtube about dehydrating an Alton Brown said that it should take about 24 - 48 hours to dehydrate fruits at a temperature of 115 - 120 degrees.  I know that for food to be considered "raw" it is not supposed to get above 118 degrees.  This dehydrator said apples would take 6 hours and bananas 12.  I decided to finally put my old meat thermometer (from my pre vegan days) to use and see how hot this thing was actually running.

 

Over 150 degrees!  I don't believe this is really dehydrating.  I think it is cooking at a very low temperature.  I still have bananas and kiwis in there but I have now taken the apples out.  They turned out decent.

 

 I am going to let the bananas and kiwis finish and then I think I am probably done with my adventures into dehydrator land for now.  Over the summer I might like to experiment with using the sun and glass to dehydrate.  For now I am happy to stick to fresh fruit in a city where I am lucky enough to get local produce year round.

Dehydrator Love

After expressing my appreciation for the dehydrated bananas my friend Lacie gave me this week, she offered to let me borrow her dehydrator.  I didn't realize that meant she would be bringing it to me today!  I was caught quite unprepared for having this piece of equipment in my kitchen.   Luckily I knew right where to look for some inspiration.  Green and Crunchy makes some delicious looking fruit in her dehydrator and I broke down and bought some fruit to try my hand at dehydrating.  And by some fruit I mean that I used my newly aquired Costco card to buy enough food to feed an army. 

The apples are actually from the farmer's market which makes it just slightly worse that I went to two different places to get this haul.  Even worse than that is that this isn't all I bought.  I got a huge thing of pistachios that come in a reusable container, dates for potential dehydrated cookies and boca burgers that are specifically vegan!  I had no idea Costco carried these, or that they even existed. 

But back to the dehydrating.  So this is the beautiful dehydrator:

 

It runs a little loud which was sort of disappointing and  runs quite a bit warmer than I expected it to but I am excited to experiment.

Here is what is (un)cooking away in it as I speak type:

 

Plain sliced kiwis

 

 Cinnamon coated apples

 

 Half a tray of plain bananas and half a tray of my attempt to recreate Green and Crunchy's yummy flax/cocoa/agave bananas.  I coated the bananas in a little honey and then poured on the ground flax and cocoa powder.  They were a little sticky but I think they will turn out fantastic.

I didn't plan very well and started them at about 7pm which means I may be in for a long night.  Luckily the thought of dehydrated yumminess is enough to keep me going for quite a few more hours.  Look forward to more dehydrator posts as my current plan is to dehydrate all weekend.  Muahahaha.