How'd you like dem apples?

Ok, these apples! My family came home about 5 minutes after I finished that last post. To finish off the baked caramel apples, you have to put the sauce on the stove, and let it bubble away until reduced to a "gooey sticky syrup". Then you can optionally add some cream to make it a more fudge-like sauce. I went for the cream option.


sauce

Once the sauce is done, just pour it over the apples and Bob's your uncle.


Apples

Nigella says that these apples should be eaten as they are, with nothing spooned over or dolloped on top. I generally trust Nigella's serving suggestions, but put a tub of Sara Lee French Vanilla ice-cream on the table, just to be on the safe side.


Eating

Verdict: These apples totally rock! The sauce is what makes the dish. I remember making similar baked apples when I was younger, but without calvados. So it must be the calvados that transforms these apples from "nice" to "special". (And at $75 a bottle, you'd want it to be pretty damn special!). We were eating the apples by cutting off a chunk, pushing it around on our forks in the sauce, and then straight into our mouths. Perhaps this wasn't the most hygienic way to eat, but certainly the most delicious.

And as testament to the absolute loveliness of these apples and their sauce... the tub of vanilla ice-cream remained totally untouched. And in a family of ice-cream addicts, this is really saying something.