Vintage Candied Apples

This Vintage Candied Apples recipe is such a fun, nostalgic throwback! If you’ve never baked apples with cinnamon Red Hots before, you are in for a wonderful surprise. As the dish bakes, those hard little candies slowly melt down into the water, fusing with the natural juices of the apples to create a vibrant, glossy, and sweet cinnamon glaze. It fills the entire house with the most incredible comforting aroma and turns a few simple ingredients into something truly special.

Vintage Candied Apples

Ingredients:

Step-by-Step Directions:

Step 1: The Apple Bed Foundation: Preheat your oven to 350°F. Peel, core, and slice your apples into uniform wedges. Add the apple slices directly into a glass 9×13-inch baking dish, shaking the pan gently to spread them out into an even, flat layer.

Step 2: The Cinnamon Candy Scatter: Sprinkle the entire box of Red Hots candies evenly across the top of the apple slices, making sure they are well distributed. Pour the water slowly all over the dish so it pools at the bottom around the fruit and candy.

Step 3: The Intermittent Stir Bake: Pop the baking dish into the center of your oven and bake for a total of 45 / minutes. Every 15 / minutes, carefully pull the pan out slightly and give everything a good stir with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula.

A Friendly Kitchen Note: Stirring every 15 minutes is a vital step for this recipe! Because Red Hots are hard candies, they need a little mechanical help to dissolve completely. Stirring redistributes the melting candy chunks into the heating water, ensuring you get a perfectly smooth, uniform cinnamon syrup rather than sticky, hardened sugar pools at the bottom of the pan.

Step 4: The Warm or Chilled Service: Remove the apples from the oven once they are completely tender and swimming in a beautiful, glossy red glaze. You can serve them immediately while they are warm and steamy, or let them cool down completely in the fridge to serve chilled.