Did you know it’s National Chocolate Week? I had no idea until my friend Jenna (who blogs at Glitter Daze – check out her chocolate week post) gave me a heads-up yesterday afternoon. Are you telling me that I could have been legitimately scoffing chocolate all week, and I didn’t know about it? I guess I’ve got a lot of choccie-eating to make up for over the weekend then! So, not wanting to disappoint my Pieday Friday readers with just any old recipe, I rustled up some chocolate apples for this week’s blog post. Okay, okay, I know there’s not a lot of ‘recipe’ required for dipping apples in melted chocolate, but here are a few of the tips I’ve learnt while making them:
1. Melting chocolate is harder than you think. I was going to make white chocolate apples too, perhaps with a cute drizzle over the top, but when I melted my white chocolate in the microwave, I didn’t check it often enough and it burnt in the middle, creating a gloopy, grainy, beigey mess. So my first tip is to keep an eye on your melting chocolate – whether it’s in the microwave or over a steaming pan – and don’t let water from the pan touch the bottom of your melting bowl, because the chocolate will be sure to burn.
2. Adding a small amount of oil to the melted chocolate is a good way of keeping the chocolate more liquid for longer while you dip the apples in. When making the smooth-running chocolate for a chocolate fountain you need to add oil, but I’d still like my chocolate to set onto the apples, so only a teaspoon is needed.
3. I added a drop of vanilla essence into my chocolate for a little added flavour, which went nicely with the apples, creating a kind of apple-and-ice-cream-and-chocolate combination. You could even add a drop of cheeky booze for adult chocolates – maybe an amaretto or Baileys?! Not too much though – you still want the chocolate to set!
4. It can be difficult to get the skewers into the center of the apples (I had a breakage) so use the point of a knife to get the hole started before poking the skewers, lollipop sticks or apple sticks into the top of the apples and push them right in so that there’s no chance of the apple plopping off into the bowl of chocolate.
5. Any kinds of sprinkles, nuts or sugar will adhere nicely to the chocolate coating, so put out plates of toppings for the children to dip their chocolate apples into.
6. Feel free to drizzle away – just because my white chocolate didn’t successfully melt, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t melt a contrasting chocolate and drizzle it over the top of the apples. Instead of melted chocolate, I used Dr Oetker chocolate flavor writing icing for my drizzles (it was on special offer in B&M discount store), which looks and tastes just as lovely! And don’t be afraid to double-dip, allowing the first chocolate layer to set completely before dipping into the melted white chocolate – yum!
Not only is it important to eat chocolate-coated apples during National Chocolate Week, but they would be a good idea to for an activity to do with the children over half-term or you could make them for your Halloween party – so much easier to eat than a traditional chewy toffee apple (I always get fed up half way through!). Here are some more of my favorite chocolate recipes below so check them out for your weekend baking
Chocolate Pieday friday articles
- Pieday Friday ~ Chocolate orange cupcakes (cassiefairy.com)
- Pieday Friday ~ Chocolate brownies straight from the tin (cassiefairy.com)
- Pieday Friday – Cheeky chocolate cheesecake (cassiefairy.com)
- Pieday Friday – Fruity chocolate fridge cake (cassiefairy.com)
- Christmas hot chocolate – spiced, cherry and mint (cassiefairy.com)
- My favorite Friday Pieday recipes for National Pie Week (cassiefairy.com)