CANDIED WALNUTS

I made these to go on top of my CARROT CUPCAKES I made. But these can be made to just put in a bowl and let people snack on too. This is the first time I have ever made these and they were surprisingly easy and good. This didn't take anytime at all to make. You could use any kind of nut you wanted with this too, not just walnuts.


DAWN'S CANDIED WALNUTS

Ingredients

• 1 pound walnut halves
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Spread nuts in a single layer over a baking sheet. Roast for approximately 8 to 10 minutes, or until the nuts start to turn brown and the smell of roasting nuts fills the kitchen.
2. Stir together sugar, cinnamon, salt, and milk in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage of 236 degrees F (113 degrees C). Remove from heat, and stir in vanilla immediately. .
3. Add walnuts to sugar syrup, and stir to coat well. Spoon nuts onto waxed paper, and immediately separate nuts with a fork. Cool, and store in airtight containers.

Start the walnuts in the oven and watch them. I set my timer for 10 minutes and it was too long, luckily I caught them before they burned at all. Also, I halved this recipe since I just had a little bag of nuts, so that might explain why it didn't take as long to roast my nuts.


Start cooking the sugar mixture. Get a thermometer for this, no if ands or buts, just get one. They are cheap and easy to find! This didn't take hardly any time at all to reach the required temp. When it does, add your roasted nuts to the pot and stir. I could see that I had more sugar mixture than nuts so I kind of just stirred it in the pot for a few minutes letting the mixture cool and coat more of the sugar on the nuts.



This is where I didn't follow the directions. I dumped all my mix out when it says to spoon the nuts out of the pot and place on wax paper. You really don't want to just dump it because then you have a pool of sugar mixture.


While they are still warm, separate the nuts and let cool.



Ta da! You now have candied nuts made in the span of about 10-12 minutes.

The best part though, you can have lots of fun saying things like, Keep your hands of my nuts or Get off my nuts, or Get my nuts out of your mou......well you get the idea. Believe me I had tons of fun last night with my nuts, see, there I go again . . . lol :)