What happens when you find somebody who has a passion for homemade candy and brittle, and also really likes to snack on spicy, salty mixed nuts?  The kind from shells, guys.  Jeez, it’s a sorrowful day when I need to specify things like that.  Anyway, what happens when she buys a whack load of nuts and can’t make up her mind about which one to make?  

Answer:  Sweet and Spicy Glazed Nuts is what happens. These are a true marriage between roasty toasty mixed nuts and crunchy candy brittle.  If you’re a fan of glazed nuts, these might float your boat.  Unless you despise spicy food, and then your boat would be a flaming shipwreck.  Or if you have a tragic nut allergy, in which case your boat is sunk.  But if you don’t fall into either category, then it’s smooth sailing up ahead.

Sweet and Spicy Glazed Nuts

• 4 cups of assorted nuts *
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/3 cup golden corn syrup
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• 1 tsp smoked paprika **
• 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
• 1/2 tsp hot red pepper flakes

* I like to mix the dirt cheap affordable nuts with the horrifyingly expensive somewhat more costly ones, so I use 1 cup of almonds, 1 cup of cashews, 1.5 cups of peanuts and .5 cups of Brazil nuts.  Do not buy already roasted or salted nuts. 

** Sweet paprika is fine if you don’t have smoked.

 

Preheat the oven to 350F.

In a small sauce pan or pot, mix up all of the ingredients except for the nuts.  Heat this gently until everything is combined and it’s just starting to steam but has not yet come to a bubbling boil of trouble.

 

As soon as it’s warmed through, the honey is liquid and everything is combined, pour this onto the nuts and give them a quick toss to coat.

 

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper, and spray the paper with a non-stick spray.  Pour half of the nuts onto each one and spread them out into a single layer. It may look like they’re just lightly glazed now, but just wait until they start to cook…

 

Pop these in the oven for 15 minutes, but check on them every 5 minutes to give them a good stir.  After 15 minutes they should be lightly browned and the glaze mixture will be a nice rich caramel color.  The picture below is much darker than they actually look, so you might need some imagination on that one.

Do keep an eye on them as they cook up quickly and might burn.  Hold the bathroom break for another 10 minutes, please.

 

Slide the nuts (still on the parchment) off of the hot cookie sheet and allow them to cool.  Give this another stir as they start to cool down to make sure that all of that lovely spicy caramel gets redistributed onto the nuts.  Try not to let too many of them stick together, although that’s a challenge.

When they’re fully cooled the nuts will be sticking together no matter how hard you tried to prevent that. This is cool though, because it adds to the brittle allure.  Break them apart as well as you can, and they’re ready to be served.  I put mine in my Fancy Tupperware for you because, well, I’m classy like that.

 

Toasted, crunchy, candied, spicy nuts.  Sometimes life is good.