One Apple Too Many...

Tonight is Bachelor Night and Seth and Elizabeth are hosting which means that Russ and I are in charge of an appetizer and dessert. Since I have been on an apple kick and still have apples left I decided to do an apple dessert. There is an abundance of apple recipes, so narrowing it down was a little difficult. I decided I wanted to make an apple bar of sorts and I finally decided on County Fair Caramel Apple Bars from King Arthur Flour’s website.

For the sake of time I decided to make the bars on Sunday. You start by mixing unsalted butter, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, sugars, and vanilla extract together. You then add the flours (all purpose and nut flour – I made my own pecan flour). Once the mixture is crumbly you remove half of it to use in the topping. You then mix the egg into the remaining portion of the mixture. This is then pressed into a greased baking dish and baked at 350 for 17 minutes. While the crust is baking you can prepare the topping. You peel the apples and slice them. You then cut the slices into pieces. The apple pieces are then mixed with cinnamon, brown sugar, salt and vanilla extract. You then combine the flour mixture (that you set aside earlier) to the apples. This is then evenly distributed over the crust and baked at 350 for 45 minutes. Once they have baked you allow them to cool. You then are supposed to go ahead and cut them into bars and let them cool further, however, I managed to skip this step. Lastly you melt caramel candies with milk or cream (I used half and half) and drizzle this over the bars.

So, last night when I made the bars they looked picture perfect! I covered them with foil once they had cooled completely (including the drizzled caramel) and didn’t look at them again until I go to cut them to take to Bachelor Night….. When I go to cut them I am disappointed to find that something happened overnight and the caramel has become liquid and the apple topping mushy. They didn’t look beautiful and appetizing like they did last night. I try to bake them a little longer to have the caramel firm up, but in the end Russ thinks that they taste good enough and we’ll serve them with ice cream and chocolate sauce to help them out. I am not sure if not cutting them and putting them in Tupperware was the problem or what, but in the end the bottom of the crust was over baked (possibly from baking them again in an attempt to have the caramel harden), the apple filling lacked texture, and the drizzled caramel didn’t hold up enough to provide its flavor or stickiness. Russ felt like the apple topping still had good flavor and he is right, but overall these were a bust. I’m not going to bother recreating this recipe to try to have a better end product since there are so many other yummy sounding apple bar recipes out there. For now I am going to leave the rest of my apples alone until this weekend when I’ll pick back up with working with them perhaps to make homemade applesauce (Russ’ request). Russ rates the Caramel Apple Bars a generous 7.

For an appetizer we brought cheese and crackers which were yummy and lucky for me fool proof. Seth gave us all a treat and made his Dad’s special sandwiches which involve a hoagie, sliced steak, sautéed onions, green peppers, and mushrooms, tomato sauce and melted mozzarella cheese. Yummy! Russ liked them so much he is still talking about them. Dowe and Emily did a wonderful Caesar salad and tomatoes with basil and fresh mozzarella. It was a fun night, but now Russ and I are feeling the Bachelor pressure… after the not so great shish kebabs and the apple bar disaster we have got to step up our sides for next week and the entrée for the following. We are keeping our fingers crossed…

(Since the apple bars aren't much to look at... I included our latest family picture from one of our hikes in Highlands.)