Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple is out on Crunchyroll, and you know WHAT???? Yiou have GOT to watch it. If you aren’t familiar with the series, Bungo Stray Dogs is an anime adaptation of a manga written by Kafka Asagiri and illustrated by Sango Harukawa. It centers on individuals with special powers who use their abilities to pursue various interests, focusing primarily on the members of the Armed Detective Agency and their daily lives. What I love about this series is that the main characters are named after major Japanese literary authors or the characters in their works, and their special powers are named after those same authors’ famous works. For an literature nerd like me, it’s the perfect crossroads between my two interests.
The movie picks up after the 88-day-long “Dragon’s Head Dispute,” which involved a great deal of bloodshed and tragedy for the Armed Detective Agency. Dazai, one of my favorite characters, is forced to come to terms with great loss, though he and the rest of the Armed Detective Agency still resume their relatively peaceful lives. However, mystery abounds when mass suicides occur, and the team is hired to capture a man suspected of involvement in the case. Madness and mayhem transpire (as they usually do) and essentially, you’ve got to see it for yourself to find out what happens.
While the film is great, what really drew me in were the promo materials:
I thought the above poster was really gorgeous and detailed, but when I stumbled across this image of Dazai, I was intrigued…
…because his apple kind of looked like a CANDY APPLE, and all of a sudden I was struck with the need to make a delicious snack to eat while I watched the movie. So, I decided to make a candy apple! The process is fairly simple–you combine sugar, water, corn syrup, and food dye together, heat it up, and dip in your apples–but becomes a lot more satisfying and fun when you stab your apples in the end, just like Dazai here. Sadly, I didn’t have a cool silver knife, but I assure you, even the most basic and boring of knives looks a hundred times cooler after you use it to stab something with.
UH. Wait.
Apples. Use your knife to stab the apples. Seriously, I do not endorse injury to any living thing–we don’t need another case for the Armed Detective Agency to investigate. But we do need a tasty snack to eat with the film, so just stick with candy apples.
Watch the video below to see the full process.
Ingredients for the Candy Apples
-4 apples
-2 cups sugar
-3/4 cup water
-1/2 cup light corn syrup
-About 2 tsp red food dye
-Skewers to use for dipping
To Make the Candy Apples
1. Wash and thoroughly dry your apples. Place skewers in the top, right near the stem. Place aside on a silicone mat to await dipping.
2. In a saucepan, add water, sugar, and corn syrup. Attach a candy thermometer, and turn heat on to high. Brush sides of the pan down with water, so that any sugar crystals on the side of the pot get washed back down. You don’t need to stir, but you can do so gently, so long as no sugar crystals get lodged on the side of the pot–this will prevent the mixture from melting down fully, and will make the sugar re-crystallize, which you don’t want.
3. When the temperature reaches around 300 F, remove from the heat and stir in the food dye. The mixture will continue to cook, and the temperature may even increase. Be very careful–the sugar will be extremely hot. Once dye is incorporated, swirl apples one by one in the mixture, working quickly. Set aside on silicone mat to cool and harden.
4. Enjoy by cutting into slices!
I hope you enjoyed this post! Check in next week for another recipe, and to check out more anime food recipes, visit my blog. If you have any questions or comments, leave them below! I recently got a Twitter, so you can follow me at @yumpenguinsnack if you would like, and DEFINITELY feel free to send me food requests! My Tumblr is yumpenguinsnacks.tumblr.com. Find me on Youtube for more video tutorials! Enjoy the food, and if you decide to recreate this dish, show me pics! 😀