Fall is here, and farms are bustling with apple pickers. But at some candy and caramel apple factories, the sweet, crisp fruit comes in boxes year-round.
In the video above, apples are stabbed, dangled from a conveyor belt, and dipped and spun through bubbling caramel. Caramel apples are the successors of the bright red candy apple, a 1908 creation originally made with cinnamon candy around Christmas time. In the 1950s, it’s said that a Kraft Foods employee had been experimenting with leftover caramels from Halloween, melting the candy down and dipping in apples.
While many shops and factories hand-dip the apples, this machine swings the line of apples through the tank of piping hot caramel, bobbing through the melted sugar. Excess caramel is spun off to coat the apple evenly. Each are rolled in chopped peanuts before being taken off the conveyor belt to cool. These caramel apples are packaged and ready to be devoured as a sugary fall treat.
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