While I love a expertly spiced apple pie or an elegant apple tart, sometimes I don’t have the desire to make a pie crust or slice and layer apples in a tart. Apple crisp is a delightful, and simple alternative. My pet peeve for fruit crisps is bad toppings, I have had far too many toppings consisting of mostly unadorned oats, sitting atop poorly cooked fruit. There is no reason that a crisp has to be boring, even if you don’t go through the trouble of making pastry.

I had originally bought a bag of apples with the intention of making caramel apples, but as they sat in my refrigerator, I decided they needed to be used. I didn’t want to give up on the apple and caramel combination, so I added a caramel sauce. Instead of oat I used a streusel topping, and topped it with some coconut whipped cream. If caramel is out side of your comfort zone you could serve with apple cider reduction sauce.

Apple Crisp

2 lbs apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1/2 inch chunks
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp cognac (optional)
2 Tbsp arrow root powder
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp fresh grated nutmeg

Topping

1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup Earth Balance, chilled
pinch of salt

Caramel Sauce or Apple Cider Reduction
Coconut Whipped Cream or Soyatoo

Preheat oven to 400°. Lightly Grease a 9×13 baking dish and set a side. In a large bowl combine apples, lemon juice, cognac, sugar, arrow root, and spices. Toss to coat. Transfer to greased baking dish. In a separate bowl combine topping ingredients and work with a pastry blender or fingers until it forms small crumbs. Spread topping over apples and bake 15-20 min until apples are soft and topping is lightly browned.

To serve

Spoon caramel sauce onto plates. Scoop a heap of crisp onto center of plate and top with whipped cream.

My new found love for making caramel and my prevailing love of sauced desserts finally lead to its logical destination. This is a fairly simple caramel sauce and is good on well… everything. Pour it over pies, cakes, tarts, cheesecake, ice cream, or dip fresh fruit in it. I used coconut milk, which worked wonderfully, but did have the slightest of coconut flavor. If you want to avoid coconut, you could use MimicCreme or perhaps some soy creamer. Making caramel is a largely a game of chicken with your sugar. The darker you cook it, the more complex the flavor, but it can go from caramel to burnt in an instant. You can make the sauce by site, but I recommend using a thermometer at least the first time so you have a better idea what your are looking for.

Caramel Sauce

1 1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1 1/4 cup full fat coconut milk or MimicCreme
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine water and sugar in a large sauce pan. Cook over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Do not stir. Increase heat to med and boil, frequently swirling the pan. Heat until a chestnut brown color, or between 325° and 350° on a candy thermometer. Watch carefully, as it will go from caramel to burnt very quickly. Remove from heat and add coconut milk and vanilla. Be very careful as mixture will violently bubble up and caramel may size up (that is normal). Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring, until sauce is smooth, about 2 min. Poor into a heat proof container and allow to cool to room temperature (about 2-4 hours). Store in refrigerator. Sauce will thicken as it cools.

Variations:
Add a tsp or two of sea salt for a salted caramel sauce.
Replace the vanilla with orange extract for an orange caramel.

Caramel sauce under an apple crisp.

My success with making vegan salt caramels inspired me to venture further into candy making. My next adventure: toffee. It turns out toffee is much simpler than soft caramels. Essentially it is equal parts of sugar and butter caramelized to the proper stage. I started with this recipe and simply substituted Earth Balance and omitted the salt (because of the salt content of the Earth Balance). It turned out well, although I may have taken this first batch a little too dark. I elected to make a naked toffee as I had plans to use it as a garnish or in other dishes (stay tuned!). If you want to serve it as a candy on it’s own, you could top the toffee with nuts or chocolate (or both).

Vegan Toffee

1 cup sugar

1 cup Earth Balance

2 tsp water

1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients except vanilla in a large sauce pan (larger than you think you need) with a candy thermometer. Stir over low heat until Earth Balance and sugar have melted.

Increase heat to medium-high, stirring constantly. The mixture will bubble up as the water is cooked off. The Volume will increase dramatically at this point. After the water has evaporated, the mixture will collapse. Cook until you reach 300° on your thermometer.

Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Poor toffee onto a Silpat

or parchment lined baking sheet and spread into a thin layer (about 1/4 inch) with a silicone spatula. Cool in refrigerator until set. Break into pieces and store in a sealed container.

Despite being incredibly in vogue in the rest of the food world, salted caramels seem to have bypassed vegans. I have long been interested in candy making, and caramels have been on my list of things to do. The fact that no one seems to be making them made me think there was something I was missing that would make veganizing them tricky. In my library of vegan cookbooks I have seen endless lists of cookies, cakes, brownies, ice creams, can even a custard or two, but very little candy work. What few “caramel” sauces and the like I had come across were concoctions of brown sugar and corn syrup and involved little to no caramelize what so ever, or were even stranger mixes of things like tahini and peanut butter. What was I missing? Well, I found out this week: absolutely nothing. While working with melted sugar can be a little tricky, you will get the hang of it. These little sweets will hence forth remain a staple in my repertoire, especially for gift giving occasions as I think they are a little easier (not to mention considerably cheaper) than making truffles.

Smoked Salt Caramels

1 Cup unsweetened MimicCreme
5 Tbsp Earth Balance
2 tsp smoked salt, plus more for sprinkling on top
1 1/2 Cup granulated sugar (I used evaporated cane juice)
1/4 Cup agave nectar
1/4 Cup water

You Will Also need

Candy thermometer
Parchment

Line the bottom and sides of an 8×8 baking dish with parchment paper and lightly oil the parchment.

In a small sauce pan combine the MimicCream, Earth Balance and 2 tsp of salt. Bring to a boil, remove from heat and set aside.

In a large, heavy bottomed sauce pan combine sugar, agave, and water over high heat. Stir until the sugar has melted then bring to a boil, swirling the pan but not stirring. Bring to boil and let cook, without stirring, until the sugar begins to turn a golden brown, about 248°f on a candy thermometer. Carefully stir in the cream mixture – it will bubble up – and simmer, stirring frequently, for 10-15 min until the mixture reaches 248°f on a candy thermometer. Remove from heat and poor into prepared baking dish. Let cool in refrigerator at least 2 hours until set.

Cut caramels into one inch squares, sprinkle with remaining salt, and wrap in 4 inch squares of parchment.

A few notes:

• BE VERY CAREFUL WORKING WITH MELTED SUGAR. It is extremely hot and will stick and burn badly if you spill it on yourself.
• After adding the cream you can test the consistency of your caramel by dropping a spoonful into a glass of ice water.  It will cool and you will be able to judge the consistency. Stop cooking when it is to your liking.
• For this batch I used a smoked salt, but you can experiment with any high quality sea salt. Flor de Sal seems to be the standard people are using. If you are going to go the gray salt rout I would recommended Sel Gris, as I find it has a little more flavor due to its higher mineral content. Murray River Pink Salt salt would also be a good choice. Any good, course, sea salt should work fine though.
• These caramels can also me enrobed in tempered chocolate for a more finished looked as well. I would go for a bittersweet chocolate, as the caramel is sweet enough.
• I used MimicCream, but you could also substitute coconut milk. The fat content makes it an excellent substitute for cream, but it will add a little coconut flavor to your caramels.
• Most standard recipes for caramels call for corn syrup. In candy recipes, corn syrup is used for it’s glucose content, which prevents sugar from crystallizing. During my research for this recipe I discovered that agave nectar will serve equally well as an invert sugar, so not only is this recipe dairy free, it is also corn syrup free!

It is best if you have all of your wrappers cut and ready to go before you start. It will make the process go much smoother.