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Writing as S.M. Laviolette
Smart & Sexy Historical Romance

Pecan Brittle Crack Recipe

Need some tasty snack food to eat when you dig into some smart and sexy historical romance?

My mom calls this pecan brittle “Two-Filling Pecan Brittle”

Sorry I don’t have any nifty pictures of my hands or pinch bowls full of ingredients, but I figure my readers are smart enough to cook without them.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups toasted chopped pecans (the toasting is up to you and you can substitute other nuts if you don’t have pecans)
  • 1 heaping tablespoon salt
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 1/4 cups light corn syrup (you could use dark but you’d get a different flavor)
  • 2 1/2 cups sugar
  • 4 tablespoons margarine or ultra-processed coconut oil (the one that doesn’t smell or taste like coconuts)
  • 1 tablespoon baking soda

Optional:

You can put chocolate chips on top of the hot mix after you’ve poured it into the pan and then top it with more chopped nuts. This will give you a sort of Pecan Roca product.

Directions

  1. Heat and stir sugar, corn syrup, water and salt over medium heat until sugar has dissolved. Once it has dissolved crank the heat all the way up. Use a candy thermometer (clip it to the pot) and cook the mixture to the hard crack stage (290 °F). (see notes below)

2. Add nuts and margarine and cook to 300 °F stirring all the time to keep the nuts from burning. Pull off heat at 300 °F and stir in baking soda while beating to froth for 30 seconds (a wire whisk works best).

3. Pour onto a well-greased cookie sheet (use something big with a lip on it).

Spread it as thin as you want it. I sometimes leave it thick as it has a honeycomb texture that is really nice.

Don’t give into temptation and put any of this into your mouth (does that sound like I speak from experience?!?) since it’s the temperature of volcanic lava.

**NOTES**

I stop stirring after the mixture starts to boil and I’ve never had it stick to the pot. But don’t take your eyes off it!

This process will really vary depending on altitude. I’m at 8,000 feet and this takes a long time and I have to use different temperatures since water boils at 194 degrees up here. If you’re at sea level, this will be a snap.

You can keep the brittle for months if you put it in an airtight container. It never lasts more than a few days around here …

Baker’s tip: keep nuts in the freezer to prolong shelf life.