We experiment a lot (when appropriate). Fermenting and dehydrating are common areas of experimentation given the relative high safety (home canning is not a great area to toy with in comparison).
Not all of our experiments work out. Even the well-intended experiments that I’m confident will be an amazing success can fall apart. Even ideas like drying apples with caramel.
This seemed like such a good idea too! What went wrong?
The idea wasn’t a bad one (in fact, I’m confident it’s something that I’ll try again). But I made a bad mistake: I cut the apples too thin.
The apples dried faster than the caramel. The caramel began to seep through the apples, fusing slices of fruit to the mesh of the dehydrator. Everything dried nicely but the apples are now welded to the trays and impossibly to remove without breaking into pieces (I’m thinking of doing just than and turning this into caramel-apple powder). It’s also made a heck of a mess that will take some effort to clean up and recover from!
Lesson learned. My next experiment will include thicker apples slices with the caramel (and less than 6 trays of fruit in case of a repeat mistake!)