Sweets for the sweet: nutty candy

As we are heading into the holiday season, I start making my holiday goodies. Cookies and candies. Whilst the cookies seem to change, from year to year, depending on my mood, or whim , or what have you, the candies are very much the same: candied grapefruit peel, quince paste, and a toffee crunch or two.

The first one of the toffee crunches I ever made was called, quite impolitely "white trash fudge." It had marshmallows, candied cherries, chocolate pieces , nuts and who knows what else in it. I thought it was revolting. And I couldn't make enough of it. Every single cookie plate or assortment I sent out, came back with the "fudge" gone, and other cookies, my pride and joy, still there. SIGH.

Well, perhaps it was Freudian, but I lost the recipe for white trash fudge years ago. Toffees of some kind find there way into the assortment every year though.

What is a "toffee" anyway? Well, one way you can think of toffee is as a "butered caramel." If you heat sugar either with or without water, at appropriate heat, it breaks down, and becomes, first, a liquid. Then a slightly darker one, then a very dark one, and then it burns to, literally, charcoal. That process by which the sugar turns to this brown liquid, is the making of caramel. If you add butter to the sugar mix, you get toffee. It's that simple.

Or is it? The chemistry behind this process is quite mind boggling and one of the scourges of every organic chemistry student. Trust me on this one. Also, if you follow basic instructions for making these concoctions, what you will have, essentially, is a toffee or caramel SYRUP. Making the actual candies involves having molds, and scads and scads of time. I have neither. So my "toffees" are really toffee syrup, surrounding some other goody, generally nuts.

I am giving you here a basic recipe for making a batch of excellent nut crunch. This is very similar to really good peanut brittle, except you should vary the nuts and make your own, trademarked candy.

A word of warning (or two). If you have small children, you should NOT let them help you with this recipe. You are going to be cooking sugar to 350 degrees. That's hot. It's as hot as hot oil, and you know how that burns. Sugar is worse. Remember: sugar is sticky. So while you may be able to rub off hot oil, real quickly, you will NOT be able to do that with sugar. It will cool down when it hits your skin, but it will take its time. So, no kids in the room, please. And wear gloves. And an apron. You will also want a paper lined baking sheet, sprayed with cooking spray, and some kind of spatula or bench knife, also sprayed

You will need 2 cups of sugar, a quarter cup of water, a half stick of unsalted butter, cut into cubes, and a quarter cup of corn syrup. You can probably leave out the corn syrup, but this helps stabilize what you're cooking, and allows it to "flow" better. You can find it next to the sugars at the grocery store. And you can use the rest to make a pecan pie. Get the white one. A candy thermometer is just about essential

Mix all of these things together in a pot, and let the sugar melt into the water. Stir itwhile it's melting down. Before that, pour out two - 2.5 cups of nuts, of whatever kind you like. This year, I'm stressing pignoli nuts. Put them at the side. Add half a teaspoon of salt

Once the sugar melts, stop stirring it. This is CRITICAL. If you disturb the sugar, you have a chance of forcing it to crystallize wildly, and inappropriately.

When the sugar has melted down, lower the heat, and get your candy thermometer, or any kind of thermometer tested to over 350 (most of them are). Try to get an instant read one. You'll watch the syrup begin to bubble up in big bubbles, then reduce to smaller ones, and then color. It's going to take about eight minutes to get to the temperature you need, but start checking after four, and check every 30 seconds. When the temperature is reached, take the pot off the heat and stir in the nuts, hard and fast. IF you wanted to add half a cup of chocolate chips at this point, or anything else, no one would mind.

Pour the mass out onto the paper, and IMMEDIATELY spread it out as far as you can. If you use the bench knife , you can use it to press things down, the way you would if you were spreading plaster on a wall. Just keep on spreading. then put it aside and let it cool, for about twenty minutes.

You will come back to a hard, brittle mass, that you break up at random, to make oddsized pieces. And you have nut brittle in your hands.

This stuff keeps, in a dry, metal tin, for months. Make several batches, and you've got holiday gifting done.

Be careful, but do try this recipe. It really is worth the effort. Homemade candy always provokes a smile.