It's the thought that counts.

Last year, I helped my friend Julie make a TON of caramel apples. Like in the hundreds. There were 4 of us, we all made like 6 batches of caramel in the days leading up to the assembly day...each batch made 25 apples....each batch of caramel took an hour to make. So, it took a lot of work. We assembled ALL day one Saturday last year. We dipped them in yummy toppings. We packaged them professionally. They were gorgeous, and they were delicious.

Fast forward to this year. I decided I'd make some lovely gourmet caramel apples for teachers' gifts. I bought apples today and assembled all my supplies. I chopped Heath bars, crunched pretzels, and toasted and chopped almonds. I even spent an hour making my caramel. You stir and you stir and you stir and you stir...all to have everything happen temperature wise in like the last 5 minutes. Everything was going lovely, until I realized that my goal temperature was 235 NOT 335 as I had mistakenly read/thought. I think I stopped around 240 but I panicked and I'm not sure. Needless to say, I was only able to squeak out 9 apples, before the caramel cooled and you couldn't possibly dip anything in it. The nine I made are very pretty, but watch out you will break a tooth on them. I am tired and worked on those darn things for over 2 hours. Hope's teacher and Hayden's teacher are still getting them. I might wake up in the morning and not be able to pass them out as gifts this year, but for right now they are good enough. I feel bad, they will NOT taste as good as they look. But this year, it's the thought that counts. At least that's what I'm telling myself.