Warren Zhang made his own caramel apples. The results were meh.

Apples are one of the very best things fall has to offer, so dipping those in burnt sugar must be the greatest thing ever, right? Well, that’s somewhat correct: Caramel apples can be a fantastically unhealthy twist on a brilliant fruit.

The caveat is that not all caramel apples are created equal. The cheap, generic caramel apples found at most grocery stores are just that — cheap, generic and terribly depressing (for dentists).

A good caramel apple should be sweet, but not unbearably saccharine. A good caramel apple shouldn’t taste like it has been sitting, unloved, on a grocery shelf for years. And, most importantly, a good caramel apple doesn’t come in an impossible-to-open plastic choking hazard.

With these lofty ideals in mind, I set out to try to make the perfect caramel apple. I would test a wide variety of apples using two separate recipes — one made from scratch and one bastard child forged from several bags of Werther’s Original caramel and a microwave.

Choosing which types of apples to use was simple enough. Many characteristics of an apple affect how well it handles its caramel. The apple’s skin thickness, acidity, texture, sweetness and size all play important roles.

I ended up choosing six varieties: Enterprise for its unique, spicy flavor; Fuji for its unparalleled sugar content; Gala for its small size and paper-thin skin; Granny Smith for its tartness and bright green color; Honeycrisp for its crispness and balance of sugar and acid; and McIntosh for its soft texture.

The two recipes I chose were adapted from successful recipes from the Internet — the stovetop method came from Chow.com, while the microwave method was on Allrecipes.

Both seemed simple enough. Obviously, the from-scratch stovetop method was a little more involved. It called for heavy cream, light brown sugar, dark corn syrup, butter and a pinch of salt combined in a saucepot, brought to 250 F and then dunked in an ice bath.

The microwave method entailed peeling three bags of Werther’s Original caramel chews, adding in two tablespoons of milk and then microwaving for two to three minutes, stirring once at the halfway point.

I chose to forgo toppings to maintain the purity of the caramel apple flavor and to save time.

The final results were disappointing.

Making the caramel sauces wasn’t terribly difficult with the right equipment, but achieving the right conditions for dipping the apples proved immensely difficult.

The stovetop caramel came out too thick and refused to stick to the apple skin. The microwave caramel came out too watery and refused to stay affixed to the apple in the refrigerator.

Pro tip: Don’t skimp on the skewers or sticks you shove into the apple, unless you enjoy digging pieces of flimsy bamboo out of your rock-hard caramel. I learned that lesson the hard way after twirling the Enterprise apple through the caramel and snapping the bamboo skewer in half.

In the end, none of the apples dipped in the stovetop caramel was edible. The too-thick caramel sauce turned rock-hard during the cooling process, to the point that cleaning out the pot required a pneumatic drill and time in the freezer.

On the other hand, enough of the watery microwave caramel remained on the apples that I could, with only a tiny trace of embarrassment, call them caramel apples. Each of the apples had its own strengths and weaknesses. Which one you like best depends heavily on personal taste.

I personally preferred the Gala apple ,whose thin skin combined elegantly with the thin coating of caramel. My housemates also enjoyed the Granny Smith apple for its nice contrast of sweet and sour, and the McIntosh, in which creamy flesh paired well with the creamy caramel.

It might be a bit of a cop-out to say it comes down to taste, but it’s the only conclusion I could draw. That, and you should never make caramel apples unless you’re prepared to contend with 250-degree caramel on your hands.