I made candied pecans today using my favourite recipe that I always use. They always come out looking like the 2nd photo there (not my picture). My dad describes it as a “paper-thin candy coating, like an m&m”. For some reason, this batch came out soft and fudgy, which is not what I want. What can I do next time to prevent it from getting to this texture? Recipe in the last slide. Any advice helps!
by Safe_Buy6023
41 Comments
i don’t have any advice but i thought those were boneless bbq wings. lol.
I wonder if there was too much moisture left in the mix. I’m not dressed in this kind of thing though.
if it was me id try a rad less sugar and maybe some more water? im still new to baking though.
They still look absolutely delicious though
It’s hard to say without watching what you did. The sugar looks crystallized. How that happened only a video playback would know.
I haven’t made candied nuts in this manner before. Either you make a caramel with white sugar and add nuts, pour out and cool or you mix the nuts with brown sugar, a little invert sugar and spices and bake them. This is almost a combination of the two.
Looks like you didn’t melt/dissolve the sugar or have it over the stove long enough to properly caramelize.
It looks delicious but based on your description I think you have too much moisture. Out of curiosity is it humid where you are today?? I have trouble with candy and certain recipes when the humidity is high in my area 🙄
I thought it was candied pork belly before I swiped…
Don’t stir the sugar
When I do this I just melt sugar with nothing else then take off the heat mix in the nuts and pour onto grease proof surface and let cool
I make candied nuts all the time! Roast nuts then turn up the heat and pour on a big glug of maple syrup, the sugar water here looks like the same thing. Then cook until it’s a dry sticky, like you’re worried it’s going to burn. Them place on slipmat
This is a candy making exercise. The temperature of the sugar and how it is combined with the other ingredients will impact the results. It is similar to when you are making fudge, it is easy to go from creamy and smooth, to crystalline clumps. I think step 3 is where things may have gone wrong. If you retry the recipe, try reducing the time you spend stirring.
Don’t give up! Candy making isn’t difficult once you get the knack of it. It might take half a dozen bad batches before you figure it out. The recipe may also just be bad. There are tons of incomplete, incorrect and untested recipes on the internet. If you just can’t get this one to work, try another one.
I don’t see anything wrong with them. This is how they’ve always looked when me and my family make them. I didn’t know they were ever supposed to look glazed tbh
I’d rather eat your version, personally!
looks fine to me, the ones in the photo look too perfect for real life sugar glazing, and not covered with sugar at all
Try a video recipe because a lot of the time those are stock photos not their actual results
Looks like the sugar didn’t get to high enough of a temperature, if I had to guess. Another culprit could be too much moisture, if you changed the way you treated the pecans this time.
Yes but how do they taste? That’s all that really matters at the end of the day in my opinion.
Looks like your candy crystallized maybe. It can happen if the candy coating got too hot or wasn’t stirred constantly/often enough. Alternatively water got mixed into the candy somehow and seized it.
I have had all kinds of candied pecans my whole life. Very popular in my culture. I have never seen them like the inspo pic. They have always looked like yours. Im not sure what thats supposed to mean about either of us, and I have no answers, but maybe that will help you accept things 😂
I thought those were chicken wings for a sec 💀
I dont know what happened but… do it again! Seriously, yours look much tastier and if you break some up and sprinkle them on a salad with strawberries, vinegarette, and some feta or goat cheese, you will want to make these each and every time 😀
They look more like pralined pecans to me. Maybe comparing one of those recipes to this one would help you figure out what went wrong.
Damn, my black ass thought those were crispy chicken wings 🫣😂 Ugh!
Bro’s KFC-ied fucking pecans
Your first mistake was making chicken
I’ve noticed when I try to make caramel, DON’T use a nonstick skillet. Messes everything up, try a stainless steel one
Yours look better. I love pralines with enough coating to make them look like KFC.
Yours look like the ones I get at the flea market and in those pink and purple bags. I’d eat em! 🤷🏻♀️
My understanding is that coating looks like the coating on peanut brittle and you need bicarb to do that. I learned that recently from a Dylan B Hollis video.
I made my mom some for Mother’s Day. I don’t use butter, and they turned out so crunchy. This time, I used 2 egg whites, and they were so much crunchier! Below is the recipe I use. Note sometimes I add a teaspoon of vanilla after I whip the egg whites.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/230557/candied-pecans/
This happened to me the other day. I had too much egg/water in the mix. They’ll still taste amazing I bet!
First you needed to preheat oven to 350. Prepare baking sheet by lining with parchment paper. After that you melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the pecans and stir about 2 minutes, until lightly toasted.Add the brown sugar and stir until melted.
Once melted, you add the water, salt and vanilla and stir until water evaporatesand pecans are coated in a thick, sticky coating. Then you pour pecans out on to parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 6-7 minutes, until crisp. Allow to cool while you make the custard. Smash into smaller pieces before adding, if desired.
Hope this helps
You made beer nuts
Next time make them using a pan, combining 1:0.5 units white sugar and water and optionally spices like cinnamon and bring the water/sugar mixture to a boil, add your favorite nuts and stir until all liquid evaporates, your nuts should have a crumbly coating, continue to stir over medium heat until the crumbs become almost silky and sirupy, thats when they’re ready and should look similar to the photo you provided. Then cool on a baking sheet obviously
These look like sugar roasted pecans, I make sugar roasted almonds and this is usually what the final product looks like. To get more of a glaze instead of a crunch I would usually keep cooking the nuts until the sugar melted so you get the final product of the second picture. Next time you could add a bit of water to get the sugar melting again and get a glaze. Im sure they taste great anyhow, picture 1 is what I typically strive for.
The sugar crystallized. Did you use convention oven?
I thought they were tripitas 🤤
I make a lot of candied nuts at work, but I do it all in the pan, not in an oven and I use maple syrup instead of sugar, from the looks of it you might have just over toasted then over baked which caused the crystallization but like I saw in another comment it’s hard to tell without seeing it
My Grandma’s always looked like yours and she was a great cook, trained under a renowned chef. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them.
Mine looked like that the first time I tried them too!
10/10 would eat yours