Banana Caramel Crescents

For those of you that know me, know that my family and I have a serious love of bananas so we usually have some ripening on the counter.  While I went with bananas this quick and easy dessert doesn't require them or even caramel.  Just some crescent roll dough and whatever you fancy.  My one suggestion is to keep the ingredients cold.  It makes everything easier to handle.  You don't have to but giving the stuffed and rolled dough a quick stint in the freezer to firm up will give you neater and prettier crescents.  I topped some with the last of the caramel, others with powdered sugars, and one plain.  You could also whip up a glaze of powdered sugar and heavy cream.  Enjoy!

Apple Pie Caramel Apples

Apple Pie? Caramel apple?  It’s the best of both worlds!  For me anyway. I get the apple pie taste but not the mushy fruit texture that all to often goes along with it plus  there’s homemade caramel.  See? Win-win! You with me?

I got the idea to turn my caramel apples into an apple pie version after visiting a local farmer’s market.  There was a vendor selling caramel apples and I got to sample her apple pie one.  It was really good and I was tempted to buy one but I knew I could make my own.  :)

I googled for a good caramel apple recipe but only found  adaptations of Kraft’s, which uses their caramel candies. Nope, ain’t happen.  It was those candies and jar caramel sauce that had me believing I didn’t like caramel and I wasn’t about to ruin perfectly good apples.  Eventually I found a few recipes but it wasn’t until I saw Jonna’s  caramel apple post that I made my decision.  I’m so glad I did.  It was very good and it makes plenty of caramel.

For the caramel apple recipe you’ll need to click here (or use one you’re happy with) and visit Jonna.  If you wanna know how to make ‘em into apple pie caramel apples here’s how I did it.  This is more a method than a recipe.  After prepping my apples I crushed up a package of Maria cookies  (Thanks Eliana!) and added apple pie spice (add to taste) to the crushed up cookies.  I set it aside until I was ready to dip my apples. After dipping my apples into the caramel I popped them into the fridge for  about 5 minutes or so to get the caramel to firmed a bit.  Once the caramel firm up some but was still soft I rolled the apples into the crushed cookies.  I gently  pressed the cookies into the caramel and set aside on silpat lined pan to pop into the fridge. That’s it!     A couple of things I want to share.  My caramel didn’t really want to stick to the apples so I didn’t really get a nice thick layer of it on them.  I missed the part in the recipe that said to chill the apples while I made the caramel.  They were at room temp.  I don’t know if that was the sole reason the caramel didn’t stick so well but I wanted to make sure you knew.  The recipe makes a lot of caramel.  Also, I didn’t have apple pie spice and made my own.