Perhaps sometime on your time on the internet, you've come across this picture:
It claims to be a candy apple made with Jolly Ranchers, and the starry effect is achieved with the addition of edible glitter. Even though I am a total candy making newb, I decided to see if I could somehow replicate this for a fun fall/Halloween activity. I already knew before I started that the likelihood of me producing anything like the picture above was incredibly low, so the fact that my result ended up being what it was didn't bother me all that much.
The first step was to separate the flavors from the 3lb bag of Jolly Ranchers I bought. I did that by myself, and my sister (the hands above) helped me unwrap what would be our first batch when we chose to keep things simple by only doing one flavor as a test run. I picked cherry as it matched the most with the classic look of the candy apple.
There were a lot of wrappers.
Some sources I found said to melt the candy over a double broiler while others said heating the oven to 350F would work just as well. I went with the oven method, as it seemed to be the better option for the lazy me. I splashed just a hint of water into the pan before placing it inside. Most sources said the candy would be melted within 15 minutes, but 15 minutes later I had a thin layer of liquid on top of the thicker layer of still very solid Ranchers. The candy at the bottom had morphed into a big blob, so progress was steadily being made. I kept checking the pan every six or seven minutes or so, occasionally adding a squirt of corn syrup to prevent the Jolly Ranchers from hardening to their normal hardness once the apple were dipped.
Wanting to try out another idea I had seen, we cut up the apples to dip the pieces individually instead of dunking in the whole apple. It appeared to work well at first, but it soon became clear that the melted candy was actually a lot thinner than expected. I wasn't sure if it was just the nature of the Jolly Ranchers, if I needed to wait for the mixture to harden more before I dipped, or if I had added too much corn syrup. My sister and I also tried to add the edible glitter. Perhaps we did not get the right kind. Adding it directly to the pot just melted it, and sprinkling it on top of the dipped apples didn't have quite the same effect as the original picture.
My sister and I created a holding tray by using a wire rack and small glasses, because laying the pops down just had all the candy dripping off and sticking to the wax paper. The tray in theory felt like a good idea, but in the end it didn't make that much of a difference. The candy was still just dripping right off, and it made a big mess while it did so.
Even after letting the melted candy cool and solidify a lot more, it still dripped right off. Things were getting stickier by the minute.
Most of the candy ended up in a puddle on the wax paper below. I did notice, however, that it did actually stick quite well to the skin of the apples, but not the insides of it. Perhaps letting the candy harden just a bit more and going back to basics by dipping the whole apple will yield better results the next time around.
It was a messy clean up and the pops certainly don't look like how I wanted, but they do still taste rather good. And, really, that's what matters the most.
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