Accustomed to Zeal: Recipe: Peanut Brittle

For as long as I can remember (and even before that, actually), Christmas for me has not smelled of cinnamon and evergreen as it has with other people, but of sweet, buttery, nutty peanut brittle. Ever since I was small, I've stood in the kitchen with my mom watching, stirring sometimes, and always smelling as she made this sweet treat. Today, I'm sharing with you this perfect recipe so you can start smelling it, too! :]

I will start by telling you that your house/apartment/whatever cannot be humid while making this. It makes it verrrry sticky and that is not what you want at all.

Nothing can be like my mom's, but, from the Texas Peanut Producers Board in Gorman, Texas, the Never Fail Peanut Brittle recipe (you can order the peanuts for this recipe from them and get a little recipe card like this with the box):

Can you tell it's been used a few times?

Ingredients:

2 cups of white sugar
1 cup of light corn syrup (the picture above specifies Karo, but my mom always says it's too thick (viscous), and momma's always right.
1/2 cup of water
3 cups of raw Spanish peanuts
3 teaspoons of butter or margarine
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of baking soda

I love my sugar tin from Ikea!

I did not get Spanish peanuts :/ I could have sworn I saw some at Walmart the day before I went shopping for this, but the next day, even though I retraced my steps at least three times, I could not find them anywhere. I went to the baking aisle and found similar looking raw peanuts. I use margarine instead of real butter, and I just grabbed an off-brand of light corn syrup--it's called Griffin's, I believe--but it was also pretty thick like the Karo is.

I measured out the peanuts. The recipe calls for 3 cups (wayyyy too much), my mom uses 2, and I filled my measuring cup up to just below 2, and it was still a little too much peanut for me. If you like it to have a lot of nuts, put more in; if you like less, put in less-you really can't go wrong here.

Measure out the sugar and put it directly in your large pot. Mine is a 5 quart (I'm pretty sure) and it was plenty big. I think 4 quarts probably could have worked.

I measured the corn syrup and then the water in the same cup. I thought it looked fun. Go ahead and measure this now, but don't put it in the pot yet.

Baking soda beneath salt and butter on top. All in one little bowl. If you do it separately, the last step is going to be much more difficult.

Now that we have all the ingredients measured, pour the water and corn syrup in with the sugar and heat on high until a sugar thread spins. If you don't know what it looks like when sugar spins or how to look for it. . .I tried to find a video for you, but it only brings up spun sugar, which is different. There is "Aunt Merle's Peanut Brittle" which may help, but you can't see the spinning very well.

Anyway, the best way for me to describe it is that in the above picture, the sugar isn't completely dissolved, so the mixture is more opaque;

When your boiling mixture gets transparent, hold up the spoon with some of the mixture on it and watch the drips. You will see a thread spin from the spoon. My mom describes it as "a wisp from a spider web floating behind the spoon." If you don't see it, try again after about 20-30 seconds (stirring in between attempts). If you still don't see it, just look for the mixture to be fairly runny and completely transparent (aside from the bubbles which obscure that a little bit).

Add the peanuts. This is what it looks like raw.

And this is what it looks like when "golden brown." This is the point at which you should be smelling roasted peanuts. If you don't know what that smells like, I would suggest paying close attention to how it smells throughout cooking, and when it smells different, it's probably roasted. Because of how my mom makes it (sets a timer for 16 minutes, adds the nuts around 11.5 minutes left, it's ready to pour around 2 minutes left), I thought it would take much longer and almost burned mine (silly electric stove causing problems for me), so really go by the smell and don't question it if you think it's ready.

Remove from heat and toss in the butter, salt, and soda (but not the bowl, which has happened to my mom before!). Stir stir stir until the butter melts and it's well mixed, and immediately pour into a baking sheet (one with high sides). Spread it a little bit. . .

And enjoy one of my favorite parts, the spoon! My sister, Raychel, and I would take turns getting the spoon when my mom was making multiple batches in a day. The little strings of sugar are the best part! Yummy sugar strings happen when the brittle starts to cool and sticks to one thing (generally the pot) and you pull it away. Yum!

Here is the brittle when it's still really hot. It's slightly lighter in color than when it sets.

And hours later when it was completely set (it shouldn't take more than 20-30 minutes to completely cool and harden, but I had to go to a class right after pouring it).