I was able to make it to Costco this past weekend.  I haven’t been since before Christmas (October to be completely truthful), and my full cart and bill proved my poor Costco attendance.   I don’t buy everything at Costco, but the one thing I love to stock up on while I am there are almonds and pecans.

Since I had a full freezer of nuts this weekend, I whipped up a couple of batches of almond pecan butter.  It has been so long since I have made this that I forgot how good it was.  We had to stop ourselves from eating all of the roasted nuts before they cooled enough to put them in the food processor!  Now that I had created a staple, I thought that it was time for me to create something new!  Candied Pecans!

OK – I know that candied nuts are not new, however, I have never made them before.  My sister, Cherie has made them on numerous occasions – I love it when I show up at her place and there is a large container of them just sitting on the counter, waiting to be devoured.  I am not ashamed to say this has happened more than once 🙂   I find that candied nuts often make an appearance at Christmas time.  This is usually when I think about trying to make them myself, but then I get too busy and I don’t think about it again for another twelve months.

But not this time!

I was inspired to make these this weekend.  I knew the standard was tossing the nuts in a bit of maple syrup and baking them, but I wanted to add in a few more flavours.  I went into my fully stocked pantry (did I mention I went to Costco this weekend 😉 ) grabbed some cinnamon, vanilla and pink sea salt.

I only wanted to make a cup of candied nuts, as I didn’t want to waste them in case they didn’t turn out.  So, I took a cup of pecans and tossed them with the stuff I pulled from the pantry.  I threw everything on a baking pan (covered with parchment paper) and baked them for 15 minutes.

I wasn’t sure how long to cook them for, but I know when making almond butter that the pecans have a tendency to cook quickly.  I was also worried about the maple syrup burning.

When I took the nuts out of the oven, they were sticky & gooey, but that didn’t stop me from trying one right away.  Please note, this isn’t advisable, as maple syrup right out of the oven is really, really hot J  I found that the cinnamon and salt were a great combination to cut through the sweetness of maple syrup.  It took about ten minutes for the nuts to become candied.

Needless to say, I regret that we only made one cup of candied nuts, two cups would have allowed for more daytime snacking!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup pecan halves
• 2 tbsp real maple syrup
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• pinch pink sea salt

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 °F.
2. Toss all ingredients in medium mixing bowl.
3. Pour nuts and other ingredients onto baking sheet, lined with parchment paper.
4. Bake in pre-heated oven for 15 minutes.
5. Remove from oven and allow to cool before tasting.
6. Keep this recipe handy, as you will likely want to make more! 🙂