GARLIC TOFFEE 'APPLE'

The horror. The horror.

I once had a great idea* for a comedy TV show called 'Hendon', where - due to an administrative error - the spirits of everyone good who died ended up in the London borough of Hendon rather than heaven. Likewise, any baddies ended up in Hull rather than hell. Aside from having thoughts of a bickering Hitler and Pol Pot running a Hull fish stall that's about as far as I got, what with not being paid to be a TV writer or anything, aside from stretching out an already tenuous concept even further by thinking you could have a halloween episode. In that one, everyone - due to another administrative error - has to celebrate 'Halesowen' on October 31st instead.

Anyway, Happy Halesowen everyone! Today, I'm going to do a take on a traditional autumnal treat (i.e. crap compared to modern stuff - I mean who'd choose a toffee apple over a bag of mini novelty chocolate pumpkins?) that's something suitably disgusting AND potentially useful in that it will ward off vampires. And by 'vampires' I mean small children who come to the door. And by 'ward off' I mean I'll be doing what any sensible adult does on Halloween - sitting in the back room with the lights off so it looks like I'm out. No one's getting their hands on MY pick 'n' mix.

Plus of course, there's a very high likelihood of me ending up projectile vomiting like something out of The Exorcist! Hooray!

*OK, fairly shit idea. But then they made 12 seasons of The Big Bang Theory and the sole joke in that was 'aren't vastly overblown nerd stereotypes funny?' (answer: no), so what do I know?

Ingredients:


This looks shit now, but come Brexit rationing this'll be a continental breakfast followed by dessert and after dinner mints.

Most of the time I think there might be a slim chance someone might have a go at something I make, even if just for 'fun'. This week though, I'm fairly certain the number of people who will be trying this recipe is this: 1. And take my word for it - he regrets it already. So for my benefit only and thus no reason at all as I've already got them, here's what you'll need for this weeks creepy consumable:

* A large bulb of garlic
* A load of sugar
* some water
* A pointy stick
* Quite a lot of chewing gum and/or indigestion tablets
* Even more of the above, just to be on the safe side 

Method:


Well at least the cooking is easy this week, even if the getting it down your neck part is probably the worst ever. First, prepare your garlic by doing this:

Wooo! It's a garlic ghost!

Then, stop procrastinating and peel off as much of the outside skin as you can while keeping the bulb together - you need it to be sturdy enough to dunk in liquid sugar without it immediately collapsing into something resembling a dead jellyfish caught in amber, but it's going to be bad enough as it is so ditching some of the outer layer means you avoid having to eat through something that tastes like a paper bag a French tramp has died in.

(Oh, in case you didn't realise, you can't cook the garlic or it goes too mushy. So we're going in as nature intended - uncooked, full strength and thus even more repellant.)

Et voila! Les neufty-neuf sans le flake.

Next, ram your pointy stick through the middle to give you a 'lolly'. You can now set that monstrosity aside onto a tray with some baking paper on it, and make your caramel - this being the awful sort of caramel you get made into hard, twirly patterns on top of otherwise nice desserts to make them look fancy as opposed to the nice caramel you'd get in a...well, in a caramel.

For this, you need to melt enough sugar and water together to make sufficient goo to entomb your garlic. I went for 200 g sugar and about 50 ml of water, but funnily enough there aren't many recipes for covering garlic in hard toffee so I was winging it a bit. The important part is to get it up to about 150 C - i.e. it has to be BASTARD hot.

I'm no dentist, but I'm guessing this isn't one for people who are prone to cavities...

Once you've got the sugar up to a temperature where it's in danger of burning a hole through to the Earth's core, dunk your bulb (Ooh, madam and so on), pop it down and - ideally - set fire to your house and emigrate under a false name. But assuming your family insist you not do a runner, leave it to cool until the toffee is hard. And then it's eatin' time! *sob*

Well it sort of looks pretty, at least. In a kind of upturned spider that's been stabbed through the heart and then clumsily laminated kind of way.

Results:


Ok, I didn't do my caramel hot enough so it didn't go brown - like that's really the biggest issue here. Ignoring that, you know how sometimes I'll write that something that sounds horrible on paper actually somehow worked out and tasted OK, yeah? Yeah, not today love.

I think I might have poured a bit too much sugar on, given I wasn't going for the 'mushroom cloud' look. Although as it turns out, a hint of imminent armageddon is pretty fitting.

This was horrendous. The crystallised sugar makes your teeth squeek just gnawing your way through to the middle bit. And then. And then...

No one is going to believe I actually did this one without photographic evidence. So here you go! Mmm.

First, I'd forgotten how 'spicy' hot raw garlic is - so as soon as I bit in, my mouth was watering like I was on intravenous opal fruits and my sinuses were filling up with fumes, leaving my eyes streaming. But oh god, the taste - it was like having a bag of onions rammed down your throat by someone using a candy cane as a plunger, and for good measure they've let off a few tear gas canisters and then shat themselves.

The face of regret. Attached to the stomach of disagreement and the mouth of 'what the fuck did you do that for?'.

But is it at least short-lived? No, no it is not. I ate the bloody thing over an hour ago as of writing this, have washed my mouth out with Listerine twice and am halfway through a packed of menthol chewing gum, and all I can smell and taste is garlic. Bloody garlic. If I stop chewing gum my mouth starts heating up again almost immediately - it's like the sugar has laminated the raw garlic pulp into the fabric of my mouth.

And god forbid I should burp (which, you may be unsurprised to hear, has suddenly become a remarkably common occurrence). That's like your own oesophagus punching you in the nose from the inside after rubbing its fists in a bin full of radioactive shallots. It would have been a more pleasant Halloween snack if I'd broken into the British Museum tonight and eaten a mummy.

So anyway, I'm fairly confident I won't be being bitten by any Dracula types tonight. Nor will I be tasting or smelling anything properly for days it seems, and I think my breath could probably melt a werewolf and exorcise a ghost on the spot. Which is a shame as I might be taking my daughter trick or treating later, so I'm looking forward to being shunned by the other parents as well as the subsequent 'Local man ruins holiday fun for kids with extraordinary halitosis' headlines in the paper (and they'll report on any old crap round here - one story was about a guy who lost a shoe in WH Smiths).

Still, I did at least make something truly halloweeny by accident. Look: ectoplasm!

I'd been led to believe that bustin' would make me feel good, but it turns out I feel awful.

Next time: I DON'T KNOW, IT ALL TASTES OF GARLIC NOW. MAKE IT STOP!!!

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