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!

Pizza!

Having made my very own home made vegeroni the only logical next step was to make pizza.  I have had some debacles with making my own dough in the past and ever since I saw Shelby use dough from Trader Joe's, it has been my go to pizza dough.  Someday I may perfect the art of making my own dough, but for now TJ's does an excellent job.

I bought two different doughs so I could make a non vegan pizza for my boyfriend and a vegan one for myself.  I decided to try out the garlic and herb dough for myself and compare the gluten stretchability to the whole wheat dough I would use for the BFs.

 

I have to say, I definitely like the gluten in the non whole wheat dough better.  I have a bit of an internal struggle when it comes to whole wheat in things like pizza dough.  Ideally I would eat everything "whole wheat" but when it comes to whole grains being healthier I really think that more applies to eating rice and barley and bulger and not so much flour.  I just don't really think flour is all that nutritious no matter which way you slice it unless you personally take a whole grain (rice, wheat, etc) and grind it up yourself.  And since I don't make pizza all that often, I don't feel so guilty using non whole wheat dough.  There, I said it.  

Flour type aside, this attempt at pizza making almost made me never want to make pizza again!  I have a sort of pizza stone and I try to use a cutting board as a pizza peel.  I sprinkled my cutting board with cornmeal and then assembled my boyfriend's pizza and tried to slide it onto the preheated stone.  This resulted in the pizza dough not wanting to budge but the toppings wanting to slide right off.  After trying every which way I could think of to get the pizza off the peel and onto the stone, I finally managed to get it to somewhat lift and slide resulting in some lost toppings and some flipped over crust.  Seriously, I considered not even making my pizza and never making pizza again.

It came out relatively well considering and I did decide to have a go at my own.  To save myself the trouble of trying to slide the pizza I decided to make it directly on the stone and not to preheat it.  This worked relatively well and restored my faith in my pizza making abilities.

In the end we had two not so aesthetically great but delicious pizzas.  Seriously, this vegeroni is incredible!

 

Sauce, mozzarella and vegeroni.

 
 

Spinach, sauce, vegeroni, kalamata olives and half topped with a sprout, bell pepper, tomato, carrot and radish salad I had.

After that I still had some vegeroni left so I decided to make pizza one more time last night to use it all up.  This time there were less disasters but still not pizza perfection.  I think I used too much sauce because my crust was a little soggy and not so crisp in the middle.  Still delicious and I had leftovers for lunch today and have more for tomorrow.