Adventures with Caramel

Due to many requests and the fact that I took some of your advice in terms of kitchen colors, I decided to put of some pictures of our new kitchen! So here it is in progress! We are going to put white brick-shaped tile as the backsplash.

Unfortunately, we are going to have to get a really short fridge.

Ryan made this window himself! It used to be a plain old wall and now its a wonderful link between the kitchen and living room.

Now here's where I need some more advice from you all. We are painting our living room gray and going with a retro/modern feel with mustard yellow accents. The question is...should we have light gray walls in our kitchen as well...or paint mustard yellow on one or two walls? Opinions?

Check out some of the fun I've had with apples and caramel recently! I carved this apple in one of my food "labs" this semester.

Last Friday I got together with some of my friends and we made caramel apples and popcorn!

First, poke in some sticks.

Next, make some caramel. I used 2 cups sugar, 1 cup water, and 3/4 light corn syrup, as recommended by Cannelle et Vanille. Warning: If you desire dark caramel, this recipe is not for you. I, on the other hand, think it's fun to see the beautiful jonagolds through the caramel.

Bring it to a boil and heat to 315 F.

Immediately dip the apples.

While they cool, you can melt some chocolate and drizzle that over.

If you have any caramel left over, make popcorn!

We girls can never have too much popcorn.

(Yes, these are iphone photos...Ryan's been taking his camera with him a lot lately. Hopefully I can commandeer it again soon!)

On a different topic, here are some of the recipes you requested. The only one I can't post right now is the stuffed jalapenos because I believe I found that in one of my cookbooks and I'm not home right now.

Fried Nutella Wontons: I didn't change anything in this one. It's really mostly just assembly. I substituted homemade raspberry jam for the coulis, though.

Baked Apple Donuts: Beware. These are dangerously addictive. Ryan and I made them disappear rather quickly between the two of us, so I would recommend a double batch.

Chocolate Chip and Brown Sugar Bundt Cake: To be honest, this was not my favorite because it was a little dry. I would recommend adding some applesauce for moistness.

Now as for the pasta, I made that one up. I did not make the pasta myself, unfortunately. I believe the sauce was a sage cream sauce based off of a Williams Sonoma recipe. When I get home I will check on that.

Thanks for reading and commenting! It's inspiring!