Recipes, guides and kitchen know-how. Mostly useful, occasionally silly.
Bonfire Night Food - Toffee Apples, Jacket Spuds and a Flask for the Fireworks
Toffee apples that crack like glass: dewax the apples, boil the toffee to 150C, dip, twist and leave them to set. Plus a slab of black treacle toffee, jacket potatoes, hot dogs and a flask for the fireworks.
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- Prep15 min
- Cook20 min
- Set15 min
- Makes8
- Calories~250
Calories are approximate, per toffee apple, worked out from the ingredients. Brands and apple sizes vary.
Every year on the fifth of November, Britain stands in a cold field, says "ooh" at the sky, and eats something that could take a filling out.
It's tradition. Nobody questions it. Least of all the dentists.
This is our bonfire night food plan: the toffee apple recipe first (the one that cracks like glass), then the jacket potatoes, the bonfire toffee, the hot dogs and a flask of something warm for the fireworks.
I read a pile of recipes from people who make toffee for a living, kept the bits they all agree on, and binned the ones that end in a welded saucepan.
The secret to a toffee apple isn't a secret. It's a hot enough toffee and a dry apple. That's it. Everything else is just turning it round and round and looking confident.
Erin has already decreed that the first one goes to royalty. She's wearing the tiara so we don't forget who that is.
Why do we eat toffee apples on Bonfire Night?
Short answer: autumn, apples and a bonfire all turned up at the same time, and nobody had the heart to split them up.
Bonfire Night itself goes back to 1605, when Guy Fawkes was caught under Parliament with a lot of gunpowder and a very weak excuse. Aaron says he was only checking the barrels. Twice. I said that sounded familiar.
The apple on a stick came later. The candy apple is usually credited to William Kolb, a sweet-maker in Newark, New Jersey, who dipped apples in red cinnamon candy for his shop window in 1908 - the food historian Barry Popik has the Newark newspaper trail. He sold the lot at five cents each. Proper core business.
Over here we made them with toffee instead, and they became the thing you eat with your gloves on while waiting for a rocket that's "definitely about to go".
Up north, there's also parkin: a sticky Yorkshire ginger and oat cake that gets better after a few days in a tin. It's on next year's list. Aaron has already asked if he can test it. Every day. For a week.
So these bonfire night recipes are really a list of everything that tastes better when your nose is cold.
What you need
For 8 toffee apples
- 8 small, crisp apples - sharp ones like Granny Smith or Braeburn. Sour apple, sweet toffee. Opposites attract.
- 400g golden caster sugar
- 100ml water
- 4 tbsp golden syrup - stops the sugar going grainy
- 1 tsp vinegar (white wine or malt). You won't taste it. It just keeps the toffee smooth.
- A few drops of red food colouring, if you want the funfair look
Kit
- A heavy-based pan, bigger than you think - the toffee bubbles up a lot
- A sugar thermometer, or a probe that reads up to 150C (check the box - not all of them go that high). No thermometer? There's a cold-water test in step 2.
- 8 wooden lolly sticks or skewers
- Baking paper on a tray, right next to the hob
- A bowl of cold water, for the test and for your nerves
- For little ones: our apple corer and slicer turns an apple into eight wedges in one push, and wedges are a lot easier on small teeth than a whole toffee apple
How to make toffee apples
Step 1 - Get the wax off
- Put the apples in a big bowl and pour boiling water over them. Leave them for about 30 seconds. Shop apples are waxed to make them shiny, and toffee slides straight off wax.
- Lift them out and dry them really well - every drop of water is a place the toffee won't stick.
- Twist off the stalks and push a stick firmly into the top of each one, about halfway down.
- Line them up on the baking paper, next to the hob. Once the toffee's ready you won't have time to go looking for anything.
Step 2 - Boil the toffee to 150C
- Put the sugar and 100ml water in the pan over a medium heat. Leave it to dissolve for about 5 minutes - swirl the pan, but don't stir.
- Add the vinegar and golden syrup (and the red colouring, if you're using it).
- Turn the heat up and boil it hard to 150C - the "hard crack" stage. That's usually 10-15 minutes. Don't walk off. Sugar waits until you've gone to answer the door, then burns.
- No thermometer? Drop a little into cold water. If it sets hard straight away and snaps, it's ready. If you can still squash it, keep boiling.
Never taste it, and keep kids well back. Toffee at 150C sticks to skin and keeps burning. It's the only thing in the kitchen with a shorter fuse than Eesha.
Step 3 - Dip, twist, drip
- Take the pan off the heat and tilt it so the toffee pools in one corner - deeper toffee, easier coating.
- Dip an apple and twist it round until it's covered right up to the stick.
- Lift it out and keep twisting for a few seconds so the extra drips back into the pan.
- Stand it on the baking paper, stick up. Then the next one. Quickly. You're racing the toffee and the toffee always thinks it's winning.
Thin coat, big crack. A thin, even layer of toffee sets like glass and cracks when you bite it. A thick blob sets like a doorstop. If the toffee in the pan starts thickening up, put it back on a gentle heat for a minute to loosen it.
Step 4 - Leave them to set
- Leave them for about 15 minutes until the toffee is hard and glassy.
- Keep them somewhere cool and dry - not the fridge. Damp air makes toffee go sticky and weep.
- They're best on the day, and fine for up to two days covered at room temperature. They've never lasted two days in our house. The theory is untested.
Got leftover toffee in the pan? Fill the pan with water and bring it to the boil - the toffee melts off by itself. No chisel needed. Aaron was disappointed. He'd found the chisel.
If it goes wrong
The toffee slid right off? The apples were still waxy or a bit wet.
Fix: pour boiling water over them and dry them properly before the sticks go in. Dry apple, happy apple.
It's chewy and sticks to your teeth? The toffee didn't get hot enough.
Fix: boil it all the way to 150C, or keep going until a drop snaps cleanly in cold water. Soft toffee is for toffees, not toffee apples.
The toffee went grainy and cloudy? It was stirred while it boiled, or sugar crystals crept down the sides.
Fix: swirl, don't stir, and don't skip the golden syrup and vinegar - they keep it smooth. Leave it alone. It's not you, it's the sugar.
It went dark and bitter? It went past 150C while you weren't looking.
Fix: take it off the heat the moment it hits temperature. If it smells like a bonfire, it's a bit too in the spirit of things.
The coat is thick and lumpy? The toffee cooled and thickened in the pan.
Fix: warm it gently for a minute to loosen it, then tilt the pan and dip again. Smooth operator.
They went sticky overnight? Damp air got to them.
Fix: keep them somewhere cool and dry, out of the fridge, and eat them within a day or two. Easy. Nobody has ever needed to be told twice.
Bonfire toffee - the black stuff
Also called treacle toffee, this is the dark, glassy slab that shatters into shards and welds your jaw shut for a bit. A Bonfire Night tradition and a free five-minute silence.
- 450g dark brown sugar, 125ml water, 125g golden syrup, 100g black treacle, 25g butter and 1 tbsp vinegar
- Melt it all gently in a big heavy pan, then boil hard to 150C (about 15 minutes), stirring now and then
- Pour into a tin about 18 x 20cm lined with greased baking paper and leave it to cool completely
- Break it up with a few sharp taps from the end of a rolling pin - ours has removable rings, so take them off first and use the handle end
Store it in an airtight tin with baking paper between the layers. Left out, it goes sticky. Left within reach of Erin, it goes.
Jacket potatoes, hot dogs and a flask
Jacket potatoes: prick big floury potatoes all over, rub with oil and salt, and bake at 200C (180C fan) for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 until the skins are crisp. Aaron is a jacket potato. He's from Belfast. He's asked me not to make the obvious joke. I've made it in my head. Several times.
Hot dogs: beef, chicken or veggie sausages, a soft roll and fried onions. Count them before you go outside. Then count them again when you come back in. Tyson.
A flask for the fireworks: fill it with a proper cocoa made with real chocolate before you leave, and hand it round when the rockets start. Oliver suggested a big pot of chilli too. He suggests chilli for everything. Including this.
Staying safe round the bonfire
- Gloves on for sparklers, and no sparklers for under-fives
- A bucket of water or sand for used sparklers
- Keep everyone - and the toffee pan - well back from the fire
- Dogs inside, with the telly on. Tyson disagrees. Tyson isn't in charge.
Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service has a sensible bonfire and firework safety list that's worth two minutes before you light anything.
That's your bonfire night food sorted: toffee apples that crack, a slab of the black stuff, spuds in jackets and something warm in a flask.
Remember, remember: a dry apple and a hot pan. Everything else is fireworks.
Now go and cook something. Then go and stand in a cold field. It's tradition.
