Fancy Caramel Apples

We love making caramel apples every fall. Love it. This year, we made our usual, but we also added a few steps to make some extra fancy ones. (I had seen some like these on a blog and thought it was such a great idea!)

We began by readying our materials. We got our candies and put them into bowls, spread wax paper over our workspace, washed and dried the apples, and then my oldest worked at getting the sticks into the cores.

Using all his muscles.

I just used a commercial mix for the caramel this year, but have made scratch before. I have actually found that the mix is better at not running off the apples as much.

We dipped the apples, spinning them and letting the trail let off before we....

rolled them in candies! We used candy corn, smarties, Reese's pieces, and crushed peanuts.

These ones we refrigerated and left alone. There was another pan that we made where we only dipped in caramel - no candies. We let those harden overnight, and in the morning, we dipped them again!

This time in chocolate!
Then the caramel-chocolate apples were dipped in the treats. Oh, my! (Please note we did this while still in pjs and bathrobes. Who can wait for silly things like getting dressed or doing hair before making such yummy delights?)

When those had firmed up, I drizzled them with the bit of leftover chocolate. Super fancy!

At last, it was time to taste them! Oh, so good!

Leaf Rubbing

This is an autumn must-do.

Go outside and pick a variety of leaves of different shapes and sizes. Show your children the backs of the leaves where the veins are raised. Place them vein-side up, and cover them with a sheet of white paper. Put a small piece of tape on each of the four edges of the paper to keep it from sliding around. Peel off the wrappings from a few crayons, and hold them flat along the paper. Rub the crayon back and forth, and soon the leaf will magically appear! My boy had lots of fun 'finding the leaves mom hid under the paper,' and wanted more and more and more.

Autumn Cookies

We only make these treats in the fall, and when the leaves began to change the little voices in this house began to ask when, oh when, would we make autumn cookies?

Finally, this afternoon we made a special trip to the grocery store to buy the most important ingredient (more on that later) and came home ready to bake.

Autumn Cookies:

1/2 cup margarine, soft

1/2 cup cocoa

1 1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup milk.

Mix all of above ingredients, then add

2 eggs,

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix again. Then add

2 cups flour

And now add the most important part:

1 bag of Reese's Pieces candies. (The yellow, orange, and brown candies in the chocolate cookie are why we call these 'autumn cookies' --- such pretty fall colors)

Roll into 1" balls, then roll in a small amount of sugar until coated. Place on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 10 minutes. (They are done when they get little crack lines on the tops)

Enjoy! But be careful. The recipe makes four dozen, but even though they've only been out of the oven for a few hours, they are almost all gone!

Sponge Painting - Autumn Tree

As we moved further into September, we have enjoyed watching the signs of Autumn. The Canadian Geese are gathering together, the air is crisper in the mornings, and the leaves in our neighborhood have begun to change color. Yellows, oranges, reds and browns line the streets and have made everything look so beautiful and vibrant.

This morning, my son and I talked about the changes we were seeing, and decided to make our own autumn tree.

First, we cut out a brown rectangle from construction paper to be our trunk.

Then we glued it in place on a second sheet of construction paper. (We chose blue so it would look like the sky)

We cut up some sponges into cubes, and squirted some paint onto an old ice cream bucket lid. Then we dabbed the sponges into the paint, and dabbed them again above our tree trunk.

Repeat, repeat, repeat....

And there it is! A perfect autumn decoration, and such a quick and easy craft to do together.

*edited to add: When my older kids got home (kindergarten and grade two) they saw what we had made and ran for the craft supplies cupboard, eager to make their own tree!