A Sweet and Crunchy Treat...Toffee Peanuts

This Christmas I want to give as many homemade gifts as possible.  In search of some easy DIY treats, I came across these little nuggets of sweet delight on Pinterest.  (I tend to lose track of time when I start "liking" and "pinning" things!)  Anyway, I wanted to do a test run on these before making a jumbo batch for gifts.  Since today is a holiday and I had the day off, I got to play in my kitchen!

It's really a simple recipe to follow.  I ended up taking some pictures just to make the post have a little more to it.

 There are only 5 ingredients in this recipe...you might even have 4 of them in your pantry right now.  Just preheat the oven, get out a baking sheet (spray it with a moderate to heavy amount of cooking spray) and you're ready.

Mix the first 4 ingredient together with a whisk.  Add peanuts and use a spatula to stir, coating the peanuts with the liquid gold!

See this picture?  This is where I went wrong.  Remember when I said that you needed to "get out a baking sheet (spray it with a moderate to heavy amount of cooking spray)"...well this is why.  I thought it might be easier to just use wax paper and spray it with cooking spray before pouring on the little nuggets...WRONG!  Once cooled, the sugary mixture fused itself to the wax paper making it nearly impossible to get off.  SO...just use the baking sheet and quite a bit of cooking spray.  (What was supposed to save time only added time and a little bit of frustration to this very simple recipe.)

After you take them out of the oven, leave them on the baking sheet to cool.  I'd recommend stirring them about 8-10 minutes into their cooling...this will help them cool faster and allow you to start breaking them apart with your stirring utensil.  Once cool, you'll need to try them :) and why not?!  I poured everything in to one of my mixing bowls and used my stirring utensil to sort of hack at the peanuts, breaking them apart.  (This is just the method I chose to use.)  Then spoon them into the air tight container you're going to be storing them in.  I picked up some air tight jars at the dollar store for $1 (since mine are going to be gifts) and then added a bit of ribbon to amp up the festiveness of this little treat.

Aren't they cute?!

Toffee Peanuts

   1/4 c. sugar

   2 tbsp melted butter

   2 tbsp corn syrup

   1 1/4 tsp cinnamon

   2 c. dry roasted peanuts

1. Mix sugar, butter, syrup and cinnamon.

2. Add peanuts, stir to coat.

3. Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 20-25 min, until golden brown)

4. Cool and break apart.

Click here to go to the site where I found the recipe. Thanks, Cookin' up North!

Happy baking!



Editor's Note...12.16.11

After making multiple batches of these little nuggets, I've discovered a few things.

1. The recipe calls for 2 c. of nuts...it should really be 2 1/2 cups.  (If you have a lot of the sugar mixture lingering at the bottom of the bowl after adding 2 c. of nuts, add a little more...this is what caused the very sticky, not-so-easy-to-remove-nuts situation.

2.  After baking the nuts, I recommeded to stir them about 8-10 minutes into their cooling....NO, stir them as soon as you take them out and then almost continuously until they've cooled enough to not clump together.

I made two pans of them last night and they turned out great with these two edits to the recipe.

Enjoy!