Homecoming and Caramel Apples

Ready for Homecoming Can you see the space between the two in the middle? He's so shy! And that makes me thankful.

Lauren, Jon, Bree, Fred, Sarah, and Denny. Zack is missing because he was told the wrong time. He got there shortly after we left.

Saturday was a big day in our house. Fred went to his first homecoming dance. He went with a group of friends rather than with a date, and he had a wonderful time. They didn't spend a long time at the dance, but they went out to dinner and then went to Lauren's house after the dance for a bit. It was fun helping to get ready and then hearing about it when he got home. He danced half of a dance, but didn't want to fight the crowds. I'm thankful that it's over, in a way. It was harder sending him off than I thought it would be.

I attended a "Revive our Hearts" conference this weekend. Nancy Leigh DeMoss spoke, and it was a great weekend. She talked about our need to be broken before God instead of being proud. I was convicted and refreshed. Now the hard part--practicing what I heard.

My only experiences with caramel apples include Kraft caramels or the wraps. This weekend, inspired by a post from Heidi last year and a conversation with a friend last Wednesday at Bible study, I decided to make them from scratch. Since Ben has braces and can't eat a whole caramel apple, and everyone usually just wants the caramel anyway, I just made the sauce into which we dipped apple slices. I didn't want to run to the store so the ingredients had to be on hand. I settled on two different recipes to try, just in case.

The first recipe said to heat a skillet and then melt white sugar in it. The only sugar I had was "Sugar in the Raw," but I decided to try it anyway. After the sugar melts, you pour in heavy cream. This is some of what I ended up with. I'm not sure if the lumps are because the cream was cold, or because it wasn't white sugar. The caramel that we got out of this pan was AMAZING, though. People would sneak back into the kitchen to eat the lumps of caramelized sugar!

The other recipe used the typical butter, brown sugar, milk combination. It looked better, but the taste was more that of artificially flavored caramel.

The finished product was so good! We ate a lot of apples that night. I think we'll devour the leftovers tonight.

Three subjects in one post is a lot, I know, but I need to post when the time arises!