Glazed Pecans

We've been receiving a little tin of these pecans from our neighbor for 9 years now. We love 'em! In fact, we like them so much that I wanted to make them and share them with my family in far-off lands (well, in a number of states away anyway).

I found a similar recipe here, but the nuts turned out too sugary and required separating each one so they wouldn't stick together. That wouldn't do. So, I finally asked my neighbor, Glenace, for her recipe. It was her mother's recipe--even more special! I love recipe hand-me-downs!

This card is all you need...

...to make many people happy!

I've typed it out below with additional notes so they come out perfect every time.

Glenace's Glazed Pecans

16 oz. (1 pound) pecan halves
1 large egg white
1 TBSP water
Zip-lock bag, gallon sized
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 225 degrees. Pour the sugar, salt, and cinnamon into the Zip-lock bag and toss around to mix. Beat egg white and water until just frothy--NOT stiff peaks or you'll get a thick, sugary crust on the nuts that you don't want. Fold in the pecans until all nuts are well-coated. Pour the nuts into the Zip-lock bag--you may want a second pair of hands for this, or place bag in a small mixing bowl to stabilize. Zip bag closed securely and toss nuts around to coat evenly, using your hands to separate the nut halves as needed. Pour the nuts onto a parchment-lined large jelly roll pan. Bake 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Cool in pan. (If there are any nuts stuck together, separate them before completely cooled.) Store in an air-tight container to keep crisp.


Give them to friends at Christmastime.
Bring them as hostess gifts.
Send them to family in far-off lands. =)
Make them with pecan pieces and sprinkle on top of salads.

You'll be loved.

Caramel Puffcorn

If you like caramel corn--and don't mind the addictive quality is has in taking over your brain telling you to have just another handful...until it's gone--you'll really like this version made with kernel-less puffed corn. I like that I don't even have to worry about the thought of cracking a tooth on those little buggers when I pop these caramel puffs in my mouth.

My mother in law sent us home with a bag of puffed corn because she knew that my husband could eat this gluten-free snack, which he would have devoured on our 21-hour roadie back home to Texas from Minnesota if I hadn't seen the caramel corn recipe on the back of the package.

I packed them away in the back of our vehicle so none of the 12 hands looking for snacks would find them and eat'em up before I returned home and had the chance to try this recipe! (Yes, this is probably considered abusive--especially when my entire family is physically restrained for 1200 miles.)

Here's everything you'll need:


Yes, I know it's a HUGE box of baking soda. You'll only need 1+ tsp. for this recipe. You really don't want to know why I have this overabundance of baking soda...and four more boxes just like it at my house. I'll just leave you with two words: mummified chicken. 'Nough said, k? Carrying on...

Here's the recipe for

Caramel Puffcorn

3- 3-1/2 oz. pkgs. puffed corn (found in the snack aisle, butter flavored--not cheese flavored!)
1 cup butter (not margarine)
1-1/4 cups brown sugar
2/3 cup light corn syrup
1 tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 250 degrees
Combine butter, brown sugar, and light corn syrup in a 2 qt. sauce pan, cook on medium heat until mixture has melted. Once mixture has melted add the baking soda.

Note: This will cause the mixture to foam slightly.
Note 2: You may need to add an additional 1/2 tsp. soda if 1 tsp. doesn't cause it to foam or get slightly cloudyish.

Pour puffed corn into a large roasting pan. Pour caramel mixture over the puffed corn and stir until mixed.

Place in oven at 250 degrees for 45 minutes, stirring at least every 10-15 minutes.

Remove from oven, pour on wax paper or parchment and break apart/separate puffs. Allow to cool and...
ENJOY!

*For a naughtier version: drizzle melted chocolate over the mixture after you
remove it from the oven.

Bring it to your neighbors for a Christmas treat.
Just beware they'll be looking for it again every year.

If you don't continue to deliver, they'll look at you with (as my 7 year old son would say) "angry eyebrows"...and you don't want that, do you? Unless they complain about your yard not looking good enough--then it might be okay to occasionally skip a year of caramel corn for them! :}

For all of you living north in the frozen tundra, you're in Old Dutch country--not Chester Cheetah country. Look for Old Dutch brand corn puffs in your grocer's snack aisle.

Cashew Clusters

If you're looking for a special treat that is super easy to make and doesn't involve the oven or icing or colored sprinkles, this recipe is for you! This is a winner above many other yummy recipes since it is 1) chocolatey, 2) embarrassingly quick and easy, 3) different than all the other "cookie" exchange items, 4) substantially satisfying to eat!

This is a recipe my mom always made at Christmastime. My Grandma Hardie used to make these, and many of her five children latched onto the recipe and have continued to make these chocolatey morsels for many, many years. My family always used the roasted Spanish peanuts, but I prefer the cashews. My children and I now make these clusters at Christmastime and give them to friends and neighbors in small tins.

Ingredients:

12 oz. white chocolate chips
2-12 oz. packages chocolate chips
2 lbs. whole cashews (or roasted Spanish peanuts)

Directions:

Place chips in a double boiler over medium heat. Stir until chocolate until melted and smooth. Or microwave chocolate to melt by heating on high for 1 minute, stir, then continue to heat for 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between until chocolate can be stirred smooth.

NOTE: depending on the chocolate you use, you may need to temper the chocolate to prevent white streaks from forming after the clusters cool. I use regular bags of chips and I don't bother tempering. Just don't overheat the chocolate while melting.

Remove from heat and add the nuts. Spoon onto waxed or parchment paper to form small clusters. Cool a few hours. Place in a tin separating layers with waxed or parchment paper.

To serve, place one or two...or three of them on one of Grandma Hardie's little Christmas plates and enjoy!

Candy Cane Brownies

You can even use a mix for these little trees!

Today was one of those days when your little child scampers up to you and asks, "So, what treat am I bringing to my Christmas party today?" and hands me a note from his religious education teacher that he received LAST week...about the party TODAY!

Whuh?

As I recall, all the kids said that they didn't need to bring anything to their parties--only a couple of ornaments for the older kids to trade with their classmates. The children were finishing up making homemade cards for all their teachers when Jimmer sprang this one on me. So goes life.

No time for creative thought. My husband had taken the family vehicle to work since it was too rainy and cold to take his open Jeep, so I couldn't get to the store. Hmmm...not much in the pantry, though I had a box of unsweetened chocolate.

I just want to say a big thanks to my neighbor, Julia, who had candy canes that I could use to make these holiday brownies.

Directions:

The easy way to make these brownies is to use a box mix, add 1/2 tsp. peppermint extract (very good, but optional if you don't have it on hand) to the batter and bake as directed in a 9 x 13-inch pan. Using a quart-sized zipper baggie, crush four larger-sized candy canes with a mallet.



When the brownies have about 5 minutes left to bake, take them out of the oven, distribute the crushed candy canes over the top of the brownies, press them gently into the top, and finish baking.

If you're like me and don't have a mix, then make a fudgey version of your favorite brownie. I cut the vanilla extract in half and add 1/2 tsp. of peppermint extract.

Today, instead of just adding the crushed candy canes on top, I sprinkled on some milk chocolate chips five minutes before the brownies were done. After they were done baking, I spread the chocolate over the brownies with a knife, then sprinkled the crushed candy canes over the chocolate.

Allow the brownies to cool completely, then cut them into triangular tree shapes for that little extra Christmassy somethin', flip them all onto a red plastic plate, top it with non-festive, plain old clear cellophane (that is molecularily opposed to bonding with red plastic plates), hand them to your six year old, let him know that you'd like him not to run with them and drop them all before he gets to his party, and send him on his way with his dad...who has now returned just bit late with the family vehicle to run all the children to their parties.

Now close the door, pour some spiked egg nog, and finish wrapping Christmas presents while all the kids are away for that one and only precious hour a week that they are out of the house without you at their side. Ahhhhhh!

If I had the time, the ingredients and the gumption, I may have tried making these yummy looking brownies. The recipe has a few extra steps I just didn't have time for today.

Note: If you looked really closely at the picture of the final brownies, you'd notice a very sparce sprinkling of green sugar. I didn't think it addded anything special, so I stopped and left it with barely noticable greenery.

Cake Ball Christmas Tree

The inspiration for this Christmas tree treat totally came from Bakerella's directions on making cake balls. This Christmas tree is made from red velvet cake mix and cream cheese frosting, and covered in melted candy wafers. The cake balls were then arranged on a foil-covered Styrofoam cone "tree" with toothpicks. A nice centerpiece for a festive holiday party.

If you think this looks festively fun, you really should check out Bakerella's site. She has a perfectionist way of decorating all sorts of cake ball-type goodies and, of course, other scrumptious baked goods.

Using the same method of arranging the little cakes on the Styrofoam tree, I've also created a more decadent chocolate truffle tree. This will be a post for another time.
Basic directions are:

Bake a cake mix in a 9" x 13" pan. Let it cool, then crumble it up in a large bowl. Then take a standard off-the-shelf tub of frosting and mix it in (I used a fork to mix) until it all is crumbly-sticky. Grab a glob of the mix, roll it with your hands and plop it onto a waxed paper-lined cookie sheet. I stuck mine in the freezer to firm up before coating.

Psst.

Don't tell anyone, but I didn't use up the whole can of frosting. The cake held together sufficiently using only a little more than 3/4 of the frosting. I like a little less frosting.

Here's what your hands will look like after making the cake balls!

Follow the directions for the candy coating wafers (you can get in most grocery stores or in the cake decorating section of craft stores), dip the cake balls and get festive or creative or nutty with your designs!
For the green accent, I just melted some green wafers in a glass bowl in the microwave and plopped it into a quart-sized freezer zip bag. I snipped off a tiny bit of a corner then scribbled away on the cake balls. Yep, I just scribbled back and forth. I'm no perfectionist like Bakerella. If you look closely at the tree you can see little crumbs of cake, hanging strings of green scribble, blobs of coating here and there. Nope, no time for being a perfectionist!
I ended up making smaller (and more) balls out of the 9" x 13" cake to fill up the tree proportionately. I made about 70 balls and used 66 starting with 11 on the bottom and reducing by about one each layer. So, let me see...70-66=4 means I had four lucky children who got to pop unused cake balls!

It would even look better if the balls had been smaller--even graded in size to have the larger ones (1-1/4 inch) at the bottom and smaller ones (1 inch) near the top. See how some of those top ones kind of stick out like a sore thumb?
It's just not festive to think about sore thumbs. So, smaller balls at the top equals no sore thumbs!

Voila!


Your very own Red Velvet Cream Cheese Cake Ball Christmas Tree. But instead of saying that mouthful, just fill your mouth with these little crowd pleasers!

Again, for more inspiration check out Bakerella. She's full of cake ball ideas. Go wild and get creative!

Spiced Pecans in your salad

At Christmastime our next door neighbor makes wonderful spiced pecan halves from all the big and lovely nuts from her son's trees. What she may not know is how anticipated her tin of sweetly spiced nuts is at our house every year! Our entire family drools when they see the tin coming! Needless to say, they don't last long.

For a few years, I didn't want to have a recipe for these gems because I thought it may dampen the specialness of her annual gift. However, I've realized that we just can't go through a whole year without them...and I've thought of other ways they can be enjoyed, not just at Christmas.

Our children eat a lot of green salad when I add fruit and nuts. So the addition of these nuts ramped it up quite a few notches. I just add them to the greens with a little green onion and whatever fresh or dried fruit we have on hand. Add some cheese if you like. I usually top it with the salad dressing I make for Napa Salad.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

16 oz. pecan pieces (not the teeny-tiny cookie pieces though)
1 extra large egg white
3/4 cups sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 large zip-lock bag
Parchment paper

Whip the egg white in a large mixing bowl with a mixer until stiff peaks form. Fold the pecans into the whipped egg whites. Stir the nuts into the meringue thoroughly so they are all evenly coated and moistened.

Put the sugar, cinnamon and salt into the zip-lock bag and shake up to mix. Put the pecans in the bag and seal it (leaving a little air in the bag to mix well). Shake well to coat the pecans with the sugar mixture.

Dump the pecans out onto a large, parchment-lined sheet pan or cookie sheet. (I use two pans so I can really spread out the nuts.) Spread out the pecans evenly on the cookie sheet.

Place the cookie sheet in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Remove and cool thoroughly. They will get crispy once they are thoroughly cooled. Store them in an airtight container.

Use the extras for a snack by itself or add some pumpkin kernels and craisins for a fantastic treat!

NOTE: If you're not making a full batch with 16 oz. of pecans, make sure to remove the appropriate proportion of egg white from the bowl before you mix in the nuts. If you use all of the meringue, the nuts will have too much coating and it may flake off the nuts after cooling, instead of adhering to them.

This is where I found my recipe for spiced glazed pecans.