Toffee Apple

toffee apple a popular confection in Britain, especially in the autumn, when they used to be prominent, with their vivid red colour, at autumn fairs. A whole fresh apple, on a thin stick, is dipped in high-boiled sugar syrup which has been coloured red; and allowed to set before being wrapped in cellophane.

The English folklorist and historian Dorothy Hartley (2012) reckoned she descried regional variation in how the coated toffee apples were allowed to set before sale and consumption. The Welsh, she said, would hang the toffee apples head-down by their sticks, while the English would up-end the stick in a lump of clay or a halved potato, while some ‘urban districts’ would lay the dipped fruit on an oiled slab so that each apple sits on a little pool of toffee.