Toffee Sauce & Caramel Spread

It's nearly and almost Halloween! Which means there'll be caramel apples all over the place and I need to try caramel apples myself. But dipping a WHOLE apple into caramel seems like a whole lot of apple and not a lot of caramel, so I decided on apple chunks in caramel dipped into some topping.

It took me 2 weeks and several experiments to realize my idea does NOT work. It's nice, but the moisture of the apple doesn't work with the caramel. On the first try the caramel instantly hardened as soon as it touched my colder apple chunks. The second time the caramel never hardened and sort of melted and dripped off my apple. And, hell I don't even remember the 3rd, 4th and 5th all the way up to what? 7 times? So in the end I came up with this: a lovely toffee-caramel sauce I've known for a while, a chocolate sauce and apple chunks to go with it. Tadaa~ a Caramel, Chocolate & Apple fondue! I thought it was brilliant.

Caramel Sauce & Spread
1 small jar - inspired by SimplyRecipes among (lots of) others

1 cup sugar
1-2 tablespoons water (optional)
1/2 cup butter *
1/2 cup cream *
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

1. Put the sugar with the water in a non-stick pan and turn the heat on medium to high. Occasionally stir until the sugar has completely 'melted' and turned into the perfect caramel colour. A very light colour will give a sweet sugary taste and a dark colour will turn bitter or burnt. So keep an eye on your sugar!
2. Melt the butter into the cream and pour the liquid into the pan with caramel. Stir vigorously until it all comes together. Add the vanilla essence, stir again, and leave to cool depending on what you feel like.
3. Toffee Sauce: serve immediately!
4. Caramel Spread: leave to cool in the fridge for an hour or two.

 * Variate the amount of cream and butter depending on whether you want the caramel to become rockhard (omit altogether), knead- or spreadable (use more butter), or a sauce (only cream). The temperature you serve it at also makes a big difference!

I add the water at the start just so the sugar doesn't burn immediately. I've tried the 'dry' method before but it just doesn't work for me. If you're comfortable with it feel free to leave the water out! Another note: the caramel can be kept fine in the fridge for several weeks.

Yup, that was brilliant. I ate it all myself. Not that I had much of a choice though: everyone's gone off to Barcelona without me. (*gasp* how dare they?) I hope they remember to bring me some food..