| Creamy Pralines | ||||
| Makes about 18 bites | ||||
| Ingredients | ||||
| 8 oz | raw pecan halves |
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| a little | salt | |||
| ________ | ||||
| 1 cup | granulated sugar | |||
| 1 cup | brown sugar (light or dark) | |||
| 1/2 cup | sweetened condensed milk | |||
| 2 tbls | corn syrup (light or dark) | |||
| 2 tbls | butter, sliced | |||
| 1/2 tsp | salt | |||
| ________ | ||||
| 1 tbls | vanilla extract | |||
| Directions | ||||
 Toast
the pecans. Preheat the oven to 350̊. Spread the pecans out on a jelly
roll pan, spray them with Pam, dust them with some salt. Bake at 350̊
for 10 minutes. Pull the pan out of the oven and immediately throw the
pecans in a bowl to cool. Don’t leave them on the pan or they’ll
continue cooking and burn. Set the bowl aside.Now let’s melt the sugar. Place a Silpat on a cutting board. This is where you will cool the molten sugar mixture when you’re done. If you don’t own a Silpat, now would be the time to buy one. The sugar napalm will stick intensely to just about everything else and make it impossible to clean.. Find your thermometer, the one with the clamp to hang on a pot. Mount it to a medium saucepan so the point of it is 1/4" above the bottom. Now add the sugar, brown sugar, milk, corn syrup, butter, and salt. Put it over medium heat and stir occasionally with a wooden spoon as it heats up. As it gets hotter, you’ll need to stir it more frequently so it doesn’t burn. When you get to about 200̊ you’ll be stirring constantly. When the mixture hits 240̊, turn off the heat, add the vanilla and the toasted pecans and stir constantly to mix, coat, and combine thoroughly, maybe 30 seconds or so. Dump the mixture onto the Silpat you placed on a cutting board earlier. With your wooden spoon, spread out the mixture into around a 8"x12"ish sheet about 1/2" thick. You can make individual cookies at this point, but I prefer the broken bark presentation. Let it cool for about 15 minutes until you can handle it and it’s firm enough to hold a shape. Peel it off the Silpat and break the sheet into rough, 3" squares. Place the cookies on your serving tray or in a storage container. If you’re storing them, just don’t seal up the tub until they’re completely cool. They’ll keep for a couple weeks, but they won’t last that long. |
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