Edibabble

The holiday season is upon us. I’ve been wanting to make some kind of candy this year to contribute to the traditions. Pastry Pal’s Almond Brittle looks amazing, so I though I would give it a try. My understanding is that brittle is almost entirely about the process and technique. Normally I would go Alton Brown and get an understanding on the molecular structure of sugar and follow his approach. But Irina’s method seemed easier, so there you go.

First, you have to go to The Pastry Pal site and check out her step-by-step photos and instructions.  Next if you compare her final photos with mine above, you’ll see that they look similar but there are some differences.  But before I get to where I went wrong let’s look at her ingredients and process.

Ingredients:

2 cups (14oz or 392g) sugar
1 stick (4 oz or 112g) butter, chopped up into small dice
3 cups (about 12 oz or 350g) slivered almonds

Process (see details on her site – link above):

• Roast Nuts
• Melt Sugar (see her process)
• add Butter
• whisk until smooth

Mistakes and Learned Lessons

I list the process above so that I can share where I went wrong and what I learned this time around.

Roasted Nuts

I bought slivered almonds from Whole Foods and they did need to be roasted.  I set the over to 350 and put them on two cookie sheets, one on each tray.  About 10 minutes in I decided to rotate them, swapping the bottom and top tray. But by that point the bottom tray was already burned a bit. So I took both trays out and salvaged what I could, losing about 1/4 to 1/3 of the almonds.

Certainly I learned that my oven’s temperature is very uneven from tray to tray. The bottom tray is of course closer to the fire and those almonds roasted too quickly. I know I’m no expert at roasting. The upper tray’s nuts were under-done and the bottom tray’s nuts were over done. It’s a lesson for next time to rotate the trays earlier and also to keep a closer eye on items on that lower tray.

Noticing that her recipe has no salt, and knowing that my almonds were unsalted, I added some table salt to my batch of almonds to give the brittle a little of that salty-sweet mixture. Which I think worked well in the final result.

Melting the Sugar

During my first attempt I used a deeper pan and had problems with even heat distribution. I recognized right away that the sugar was melting first in a ring on the pan above the actual fire. I tried to even out the heat by placing the pan on another pan. I made a couple of mistakes on that round ending in me tossing the first batch of sugar and butter. I don’t have a photo of it but the sugar ended up clumping and not melting enough. I tried adding in the butter early and that of course changed the consistency of the sugar and there was no turning back. So I tossed that disaster out and tried again.

On my second attempt I used a sauce pan which was large enough to hold everything but not really large enough for the whole process (I’ll get to that mistake in a minute). The sugar did melt better in the bigger pan and got brown very quickly. I used a wooden spoon this time instead of a metal one, and did get the sugar all melted and the whole thing was liquid. So my second attempt there was better, but a larger pan would be even better.

One issue with her dry method is that the sugar clumps on whatever spoon you’re using (wooden or metal). So be ready for clumping. I was able to scrape off the big chunks and they eventually melted into the goo.

Adding Butter

Wow she wasn’t kidding, it does sizzle and splash.

In my first attempt, when I saw the sugar was clumping too much I tried adding the butter early thinking that it being basically a liquid it would maybe help melt the sugar. NO! That’s impossible. First off the butter just coated the clumps, and second, the butter would burn at whatever temperature the sugar would have to get to melt. So lesson one about the butter is don’t add it early.

The second attempt I had a thought: what would alton brown do? Knowing how much the butter sizzled, what would I do to ease that? When adding the butter, it has to melt in, but the temperature of the sugar is quite high, so it sizzles. So this time I first melted the butter in the microwave, about 20 seconds at a time until it was liquid. Then had that on hand ready to add in once the sugar was a liquid. I still don’t know if this was a good move or not. Whisking in solid butter AS it melts might be an easier way to incorporate the butter than whisking in liquid butter. It might not matter. Either way there were more mistakes…

If you compare my finished photo above with her finished photo, you’ll see two important differences. First is that the brittle in my photo is oily and there is a whole glop of butter along the edge. The second is that the consistency of the brittle looks different. Hers is smoother, maybe you could call it creamier. The clue to why is in the photo of her batch before she adds the nuts. In hers there is no oil resting on the surface, it’s all been whisked in until smooth. This was even mentioned in her directions, which I failed to read thoroughly enough to understand. But now I know.

When I added my butter boy did it sizzle. I immediately began whisking and since my pan was a little bit too small for the task, some oil and melted butter splashed out, and of course the butter ignited and flared up. I only considered the extinguisher for a moment as the flair up didn’t last long. But the excitement did cause me to add the nuts before the batter was whisked enough to be smooth. I was also worried that the batter would get too brown if I didn’t get it off the stove. This mistake was in not fulling knowing the process before I started.

When you’re in the thick of this you can’t stop to read directions or you’ll burn something (or worse). I think the lesson here is still that I need a larger pan. In order to be able to wisk enough to get it smooth, you also need to put some vigor in it, but you don’t want to splash it. Probably if I did it again I could do it better even without a different pan, but the larger pan would help.

Final result

I think I did ok with adding the nuts and spreading it out. It is important to know that once you add the nuts you have to work fast. The nuts draw out a lot of heat and the whole thing starts to set up.

The main problem in the final result was the oiliness and now I know why that happened (not whisking it thoroughly enough before adding the nuts). After it cooled and was broken apart, there was still a coating of oil over everything. I managed to pat a lot of it dry with paper towels, but it’s there. You can’t get rid of it completely. But the flavor is good despite the consistency and oiliness.

Conclusion

I will try to make this again, probably fairly soon, and next time I won’t make the same mistakes.  I’ll watch the almonds closer on roasting, probably acquire a larger pan, I’ll add the butter carefully, and I’ll whisk it until it’s smooth before adding the nuts. In the mean time, I’ve got some fairly decent brittle to eat.