Thursday - December 10, 2009

Hard Crack

Impress your friends and relatives this season with home made candy. It’s easier than you think. I just made this batch of peanut brittle in a little more than half an hour, including clean up.

1 11” x 17” no-stick cookie sheet of average weight. Not the ultra heavyweight kind.
1 8 quart saucepan - the “pasta for two” pot
1 12 quart saucepan mostly filled with water
Teakettle with boiling water in it
1 medium heat resistant mixing spoon. Wood works fine, or use one of those silicon ones. Just make sure it can handle 350 °F
2 or 3 cup glass measuring cup
candy thermometer

Set the 12 quart pan of water to heating. Turn on the oven and get it warm ( 175°F ). Generously butter the no stick baking pan and put it in the oven. Turn off the oven.

Half unwrap the butter and slightly squash it down. Sprinkle the baking soda on it evenly.

Measure the sugar and pour it in the 8 quart pan. Add the salt. In the same measuring cup you used for the sugar, measure the corn syrup and pour it in. Now pour 3/4 cup of the boiling water from the kettle into the measuring cup. Mix it around so it dissolves any leftover sticky, then pour it into the 8 quart pan. Start heating the 8 quart pan. Set the heat to a bit less than half, and stir. Keep stirring. When the sugar mixture gets hot enough it will start to bubble, and the sugar might cake up a bit. Stir it vigorously and use the spoon to scrape free any stuck bits. When all the sugar is dissolved and you have a nice clear liquid, turn up the heat. Stop stirring. Get out your candy thermometer and keep an eye on the temp. It will take a good while to hit 225°F, but will take only a couple of minutes to reach 275°F. Stir it a little. Around 300° the sugar will begin to brown. Hey, you’re making caramel here. When the liquid hits 305-310 it will be nicely brown. Take the pot off the heat. Toss in the butter and stir it around. The baking soda will cause the mixture to foam up a bit. Stir it for about a minute until you get a nice creamy looking mix. Stir in the peanuts. You get a mixture about as thick as hot asphalt. Open the oven and pour it all onto the cookie sheet while moving the pot around. Scrape out as much as you can. Try and push the mixture around so it’s even on the pan, but it won’t move much. Return cookie sheet to warm oven.

Put the 8 quart pot back on the stove. See that hardened brown mess in there? And look at the crust on the spoon! How the hell are you ever going to get that clean? Ha. Take the 12 quart pot of water, which should be boiling by now, and pour in enough to mostly fill the smaller pot. Stir it around with the same mixing spoon. The boiling water will soften the hardened caramel and most of it will dissolve. Once you’ve loosened all the chunks, pour out the steamy water and you’ll have a clean pot and a clean mixing spoon. Pour some more boiling water into your glass measuring cup. Stir, dump. Goo? Gone!

Take the cookie sheet out of the oven and let it cool. Give the sheet a little twist and the peanut brittle will come loose and break into nice sized pieces.



You can make endless variations on this recipe. You can use pecans, almonds, mixed nuts, whatever. Make your first batch for yourself, then adjust the recipe. Some people like more nuts, some want less. Some want it saltier, some want it a little foamier - which is where the brittle part comes from - so they add a bit more baking soda. Some even dust the cookie sheet with baking soda as well.

The batch I just made was done with half cocktail peanuts and half dry roast peanuts. I did not add any salt, since the peanuts were already salted. I took the mixture off the burner at 315°F. While my experimental guinea pigs neighbor ladies downstairs raved about it, I think I can do better next time. A bit more butter, and go with the salt. Use straight cocktail peanuts and then press a couple handfuls of dry roasted ones into the mixture once it’s on the cookie sheet. Maybe butter up the rolling pin and roll it down a little. This batch came out finger thick, with a serious Brazilian tan, the exact color of a Kraft Karamel; what I wanted was more of a honey blond. So I’ll take the next batch off the heat just when it hits 300-305°F. And perhaps try just a smidge less baking soda. But either way, there won’t be anything left of this batch by morning.

This recipe is so easy that a child could do it. But be careful; the sugar mixture gets much hotter than boiling water, nearly as hot as fry oil. So you can get badly burned. Therefore I recommend that you make sure your kids are past the klutzy age, say around 30, before letting them make this without supervision.

PS - “hard crack” is the candy maker’s term for sugar solutions heated to 300-310°F. Even just a tiny bit hotter than that and caramelizing starts to take place. With peanut brittle you want things to just start to caramelize, and that’s it. I think my cheapo $3 candy thermometer reads a little low too. My mom has had her commercial grade candy thermometer longer than I’ve been alive, and it still works great. Expensive? As if - it’s less than $9.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/10/2009 at 04:04 PM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy • Fine-Dining •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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