We make hundreds of Caramel Apples every fall. And we forever swear by using our beloved Peter’s Caramel. It’s delicious, affordable, and consistently works great!
But honestly it had been years since we had tried other caramel products out on the market, so we wanted to give an honest review of the other offerings available out there.
The Caramel Apple Test!
We gathered up the most commonly seen products and here’s what we tested: homemade caramel, store bought Kraft square caramels, Peter’s Caramel, and caramel apple wraps. We followed the instructions for each type of caramel and covereed some Granny Smith apples.
Here’s what they looked like:
One hour after dipping:
24 hours after dipping:
72 hours after dipping:
Now that you’ve see what they looked like, it’s time to share what they tasted like. We cut each one into chunks for sampling and we shared with the Gygi crew. Everyone tried all four apples and ranked them by taste & texture.
Their reactions were the most fun of this whole process. And the scoreboard is as follows:
1st place: Peter’s. We never doubted this one! It’s been our favorite caramel to use for apples for yeeears and just proves time and time again that consistency and reliability matter most. The taste is always spot on.
2nd place: homemade caramel. We loved the flavor of the homemade, but it stayed super soft, never fully setting up on our apple. Flavor wise, it was a close 2nd to Peter’s but texture wise, we hoped for a sturdier result.
3rd place: the caramel wrap. You’ve likely seen these at the grocery store and while they didn’t produce the prettiest apple, votes were with the flavor. Generally not bad and a convenient, super easy process for kids to do on their own.
4th place: the store bought Kraft caramel squares. This was a really surprising result because we know a lot of people use these to make apples each year. For us, it set up way too hard and was difficult to cut and to eat. Overall we don’t recommend this method.
In review, we love how easy and tasty Peter’s Caramel is. It is still the winner in our minds. However, the homemade caramel was so flavorful. We could definitely see that tweaking the recipe, and trying some modifications, we could possibly end with a homemade recipe that works more smiliarly to Peter’s. But when it comes to apples and pretzel rods, it’s a no-brainer to just melt and use the Peter’s brand.
For more tips and ways to use your Peter’s Caramel, check out Caramel 101 on the blog.
