Its apple season, and as we rifle through our apple recipe list it becomes a bigger challenge every year to create new apple flavors. Especially considering we love love love some of our old ones. This year it was time to tackle the candied apple.
The classic cinnamon candy flavor on a candied apple – one you might also know from red hots candy or sticks of gum is Ceylon cinnamon, which is not the cinnamon most of us are used to eating in baked goods and desserts. That would be Cassia. Some call Ceylon “true cinnamon” even though its probably usurped by Cassia in usage. It’s easy to confuse the two, but their flavors could not be more different. In order to make sure this flavor accurately and truly represents that cinnamon candy flavor, we utilized Ceylon in several forms. You cannot discern the two by looking at them, but I’m going to include a picture of Ceylon cinnamon anyway. 🙂
First, the apples. We chose these beauties from Hoch orchard, diced them up, tossed them with brown sugar, butter and powdered Ceylon, and roasted them in the oven to concentrate their flavor and squeeze out the water (as we do). Then they were tossed with a little cane sugar at the end to provide a slight crunch. Parents, if you are looking for a healthy, and easy snack/almost candy/dessert for your kids (or yourself) – just these roasted apples will do the trick. But I digress, back to making ice cream.
Next, the syrup. We made our basic cinnamon syrup, but using Ceylon cinnamon instead of Cassia. For fun and for some color, I dissolved some red hots into the mix. You know, to make it legit.
The cream is made with our regular cane sugar base and infused with more ceylon cinnamon powder. The roasted apples are tossed in at the end of the churn, and the syrup is layered in as the ice cream is packed into the pint. The result is an ice cream laced with levels of ceylon cinnamon invoking that “red hot” flavor, and tart roasty chunks of apple speckled throughout each bite.
There you have it – Red Hot Candied Apple alongside our red hot new labels!
Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 10/4/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!
