hey !! I John can I'll teach you how to make delicious homemade recipes to share with your family and friends
today we're doing something that's so easy but very versatile these candied pecans are crunchy delicious full of spices and you can add them into salads onto cakes or have them for a cocktail hour like
I will be doing let's get started I love having candied nuts around the house our new neighbors are coming over and I thought it'd be fun to have just a little spread to go with drinks if you're wondering like what is this kitchen this doesn't look like my new kitchen situation the renovations are dragging on a bit so we moved into a rental house until the new one is done all right first off we're gonna add in 1 cup of lightly packed brown sugar into a pot generous 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon you can add some kick with cayenne pepper if you want to 1/2 a teaspoon of salt and I'm adding in like a big pinch or 1/4 teaspoon of allspice 3 tablespoons of water and a drizzle this in here give it a very light mix just to get it started okay
now it's ready to go onto the heat and if you want you can click up here for my roasted root vegetable salad with candied pecans amazing and it's a beautiful play of savory and sweet this goes on to heat and I'm bringing a generous cup of pecan halves because we'll be dumping those in pretty soon let's go okay my mixer comes to a boil and you want to wait for it to be like boiling boiling the bubbles are all over not just on the edge try not to play with it too much just let it do its thing all right
now it's time to dump those pecans in carefully just give them a little stir to make sure everything's all coated ok and once you're sure everything's been coated just cover it up give it a minute all right so right now these are all cooked we're gonna spread them out onto our parchment paper but this is the quick part you have to be ready with a parchment paper and they are gonna dry or they're gonna set really quickly so just go go go and I like to leave most of them in the pot because there's enough residual heat there to kind of just keep it warmed up and liquidy I've made the mistake of dumping them all out onto parchment before and you end up with this like solidified mass but if you keep them in that pot it really really really really helps
if you're feeling really ambitious you can dump a bunch outs but that's some pro moves right there if you're making these for solids or something else or if you're gonna chop them up like for a roasted Brussels sprouts these are amazing with that little bacon then you can not worry really at all but if you're separating them out for a cake and you want to have beautiful individual pieces then you'll want to like have the beautiful individual pieces and that means that before you add your pecans in you want to like sort out all of the actual halves so if you made Italian buttercream or anything it's heated to like 240 degrees which is the soft ball stage that means that the sugar never hardens up it just stays kind of like sappy this is the hard crack stage which means that the sugar will fully turn into that like liquid glass so it actually will harden up as soon as it cools down if you didn't heat it up enough you're gonna have kind of like tacky tacky pecans but this look already perfect look at that this will be wonderful on my spice cake
I made that cake with an insane fall buttercream tree situation but you just put beautiful pecan pieces all over it and it would be amazing - or chop the pecans up and make a pecan skirt on the bottom just like you would for like a confetti cake or something look at how pretty these guys are they are so shiny and sparkly they're gonna be perfect with the cocktails I hope the neighbors enjoy them if you like this recipe check out my banana bread it is so delicious not so similar maybe but amazing than tha less alright time for a bite oh my gosh crunchy just right amount of spice love the salt sweet what is not to like about these
