I’m in a traditional mood this year when it comes to Halloween treats.  The Candy Apple Pops has got me on a sort of tangent and so I had to find another adaptation of the sweet treats to share with you.  Enjoy!

Caramel Apple Crisp

Ingredients:

Crisp:

1 C Brown Sugar

½ C Flour

½ C Rolled Oats

½ C Butter

1 Tbls Ground Cinnamon

1 Tbls Nutmeg

6 Granny Smith Apples  (Don’t use a red variety of apple, they don’t bake well at all and the tartness of this apple blends so very well with the brown sugar flavour.)

Sauce:

¾ C Water

1C Sugar

½ C Corn Syrup

1 C Whipping Cream

Instructions:

Crisp:

1. Preheat oven to 375F.

2. Mix the first six ingredients and mix by hand until throughly blended.

3. Take a lightly greased 10-inch pan, slice apples thinly and layer over bottom of the pan.

4. Sprinkle flour and oat mix over the apples in an even layer.

5. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until apples are softened.

6. While crisp is baking in the oven prepare caramel sauce.

Sauce:

1. Mix first three ingredients in sauce pan and heat over light to medium heat, stirring constantly until it all dissolves and mixes.

2. Turn up heat until mix boils and then wait without stirring until it begins to turn a dark gold colour. A helpful trick is to lift the pan by the handle occasionally and tilting it in a circular motion to mix it just a bit without stirring. Be careful not to spill, this is a very nasty burn to get. This step should take roughly 8-9 minutes.

3. Take the pot off the heat and slowly add cream. BE CAREFUL! The coldness of the cream meeting the heat of the mix will cause splattering and bubbling that could splash onto you, best to wear long sleeves when making this.

4. Return to a lower setting of heat and mix until the whole sauce is smooth and dissolved through.

5. Once crisp is finished, portion servings into dishes and then drizzle the caramel sauce over the servings generously. Feel free to serve with ice cream.

Fine. I’ll admit it. I love Gothic Lolita fashions. I love the frills, the lace, the teeny tiny top hats and adorable little crowns. I love wearing the clothes, making the clothes and now especially I love the music.

What? You haven’t heard of Gothic Lolita music? Then you must not have heard about RazorBladeKisses. Formed in 2000, RazorBladeKisses is a “Toybox Goth Band” that boasts a delicious blend of unique sounds that hail from across the world. I recently got the chance to review their new album “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Scar” which will be released early 2010 and I’m in love. I normally don’t care much for what I’ve heard of “Lullaby Rock” because most of it’s a poor blending of cutesy little girl vocals thrown together with whimsical rock music, but this is a completely different category as far as I’m concerned.

I was skeptical at first, I’ve had to endure a lot of hit and miss as far as new music has gone lately and it has jaded me a little to the point where I wasn’t really interested in taking a chance on anyone new until something really grabbed me. Well this band really grabbed me. I popped my headset on to listen to the album while I was doing dishes and I listened to “Pretty Dead Doll” first. The sexy, dark sounds hooked me right away and forced me to give the music my full attention on the first round and I ignored the dishes completely to just sit down and listen to the album a couple times over. Okay, I’m lying, I danced to it for a while too because I just couldn’t help myself.

I was blown away, there’s a song on the album for every mood. “Pretty Dead Doll” is a great song to just dance to, “New Nightmare” is my favorite song to listen to when I’m at the gym and need something keep my pulse pumping and “Teddy” just has some great lyrics I can’t get out of my head. The songs have some great energy without being thrashy or crazy aggressive, the instrumentals and the vocals compliment and support each other without one overtaking the other and my only complaint thus far is that my headphones don’t play the music any louder.

And talk about adorable! I would love to see this band play live. They’ve got the image to go with the tunes and they look absolutely gorgeous in curls, frills, top hats and ties. The effort and dedication to their style is obvious and something I love about them. I’ve seen a lot of bands use their fashions and image to sell crappy music and I’ve known great musicians who put not effort at all into their looks and it’s sometimes a tough balance for the best of them. Not so much in this case, RazorBladeKisses actually matches the sound to the look.

So my conclusion here? Go buy this album, as soon as it’s released. At the very least, go visit their MySpace page and listen to some of their songs and get hooked, then go buy the album. Or better yet, if you’re in the UK and you get the chance, go see the live and then tell me what it’s like in order to make me jealous.

It’s a common ritual at our place to have friends over for dinner every Friday or Saturday each week.  Most weeks I like to try something new or show off a new recipe I’ve created so I can get feedback on what works and what doesn’t.  Sometimes, we just order pizza because I have worked late and don’t have time to get something pulled together before the guests arrive.   It’s kind of a cop-out and while pizza is great, I would rather serve them something made in my own kitchen so I have to be creative with what I can pull off in less than half an hour.

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to have a couple jars of homemade tomato sauce on hand and maybe a couple bags of homemade meatballs in the freezer that just need to be thrown into the oven.

Sometimes though, like last night, I discover that I’ve run out.

Luckily, I did have a jar of gourmet tomato sauce lurking in a cupboard and it was a five miute run to the grocery store to pick up some fresh spicey Italian sausages.  Get the uncooked kind, not the “pre-cooked freezer bag” variety.  Slice them all into small meatball style chunks and then cook them in a skillet with a little bit of olive oil until they are cooked through and maybe a  little crispy on the outside.  At the same time, heat the sauce in a pot, stirring frequently, and make sure you keep a lid on it.  When tomato sauce starts to ‘boil’, it will splatter everywhere and it’s a very painful burn at times so be careful.  Turn it down on low once it is heated all through the sauce.

When the sausages are done cooking, just make sure the sauce is spiced the way you like it and then add the meat, stirring it in so the flavours of the sausage help infuse with the sauce.

If you haven’t been cooking the pasta at the same time as this you can keep the sauce warm in a low heat slow cooker or just on a low heat on the stove with the lid on.  Just make sure to stir often so it doesn’t burn to the bottom.