use real butter

The word brittle conjures up so many meanings. Brittle bones, brittle failure (okay, that’s a term in mechanics, but important for all sorts of materials studies), brittle personality. I’ll admit that when I hear the word brittle my mind immediately turns to brittle-ductile transition zones in the Earth’s crust. And yet my favorite meaning of brittle is the confection of a delicious nut meat suspended in the matrix of a caramelized sugary goodness, broken into delightfully dangerous shards that melt and crunch in your mouth. Swoon.

There are two camps of people when it comes to caramelized sugar. Those who love it and those who hate/fear it. I’ve been in both camps - twice. It was pretty easy to master at sea level although I did brick my fair share of pots of hot crystallized sugar when I got a little too cocky (read careless). What a bleeping mess. But in general it was a cinch to make. Then I moved up here, as in several thousand feet up. Caramelizing sugar became a little more finicky and I fell into the hate/fear camp. My pastry course at CSR helped with my “issues”. The introduction of acids like cream of tartar or lemon juice, and the addition of corn syrup helped to stabilize the mixture as it boiled to amber loveliness. Back into the love camp.

orange zest adds a subtle floral overtone

This recipe originally calls for the use of hazelnuts. I adore hazelnuts. I hate skinning them. It is a royal pain in the ass because you can never get all of the skins removed. If I were Martha Stewart, I would have my lackeys do it, but my lackey is me. I’ll save my hazelnuts for something else. I decided to go with another highly prized, but easy to peel (read: already peeled) nut - macadamia nuts. I read somewhere that mac nuts are poisonous for dogs, so I’m careful not to let those bubs roll off the counter during chopping because Kaweah is always standing vigilant nearby.

rough chopped mac nuts and zest

One of the nice tricks I learned from our chef was that he covers the pot with the sugar, water, and corn syrup with the lid and lets it boil until steam is coming out from under the lid. Let it boil for a while to ensure that all of the sugar has dissolved. He said the steam condenses on the lid and then runs down the sides “washing” the sugar crystals down. When the sugar is dissolved, you can remove the lid. We don’t want crystals in this mixture if we can avoid it. Because when this stuff starts to boil, the water is boiling off and the concentration of sugar increases and the temperature rises which eventually takes your sugar through the various stages ending up with a gorgeous amber candy. If you have a crystal in there or if one forms (by disrupting it with air for instance), then it will seed the rest of your batch and the whole thing will turn into a dry and very hot brick of sugar. It’s depressing. You want to avoid this and allow the sugar to transform into liquid caramelized sugar. That’s why folks playing with caramelized sugar suffer all sorts of random burns - the stuff is HOT and it STICKS to you. Ouch.

stirring in the nuts and zest

Watch your sugar carefully because when it begins to turn amber, it changes quickly and you don’t want it too burnt. Remove from heat and let it cool for a minute. Stir in the other ingredients carefully. You don’t want to introduce too much air because the caramel can still seed and crystallize (this happened to another group in our class). Quickly and smoothly pour it out onto a silpat or a greased baking sheet and spread it evenly into a continuous blob. Be warned, the baking sheet will get very hot. When the brittle cools, break it up with your hands.

hence the name

If you add butter or cream to a brittle recipe, it becomes toffee. Mmmm, toffee… You can also vary the recipe and use peanuts with ground cinnamon or just play around with it. The brittle can also be ground up in a food processor (I’ve never done this) and pressed on the sides of cakes or sprinkled on a scoop of ice cream.

great for gifts or snacking

Macadamia Orange Brittle

4 oz water
14 oz sugar
4 tbsp light corn syrup
1 cup macadamia nuts, roughly chopped (originally calls for hazelnuts, skinned and toasted)
1/2 tsp orange zest

Line a half sheet pan with silpat or parchment. Grease or lightly butter. Combine the water, sugar, and corn syrup in a saucepan and gently stir them together with clean fingers to remove pockets of dry sugar in the pan. Cover the saucepan and bring to a boil. Once steam is escaping from under the lid, let boil for a minute then remove the lid. Don’t stir the mixture. Cook until the sugar reaches an amber color (about 315F). Remove from heat and let bubles subside for a minute. Stir in the nuts and zest with a warm spoon (so the sugar doesn’t react to the cold). Make sure the ingredients are evenly distributed. Pour mixture onto sheet pan and spread to a thickness of about 1/4 to 1/2 inch. If it cools too fast and becomes too hard to spread, put it in a 350F oven for a couple of minutes to heat it up and make it spread. Let it cool completely and then break it into pieces.

My left arm has been all jacked up since Friday, but I am slowly regaining the range of motion. It has been quite the pickle getting back to cooking and baking, but I can say with certainty that I am indeed back. It’s a good thing I am right-handed, no?

Every now and again I get a hankering to make something from my youth. Having grown up in southern Virginia, I am well-versed in the food classics made of cheese-food, sour cream, mayonnaise, instant onion soup mix, cream of *your choice* soup, and all manner of white-trash food. I don’t know if rice crispy treats should be classified under 1970s or white-trash or both?

rice crispies and marshmallows

Rice crispy treats - one of the simplest goodies I have in my quadrille scientific notebook o’ favorite recipes. Rice crispies, marshmallows, butter - huzzah! Once, while visiting with my little niece and nephew, I saw they had rice crispy treats in their pantry (their pantry is a veritable advertisement for processed foods - it’s a little disconcerting). These were store-bought rice crispy treats. I scratched my head because isn’t that akin to store-bought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? Lo and behold, they had pb&j’s in their freezer. Don’t people make food anymore? Is it even considered making food to slap bread, peanut butter, and jelly together?

add marshies to the melted butter

I never thought to experiment with ye olde rice crispy treats recipe until graduate school, when my brilliant friend, Carrie, told me to mix 1/2 cup of peanut butter into the marshmallows and butter. Peanut butter rice crispy treats! Jeremy was not so much a fan of those. I thought he was a purist until that fateful day I bought Cocoa Pebbles instead of Rice Crispies (but really, I buy generic). Chocolate rice crispy treats definitely rank above peanut butter for him. Even better is the organic cocoa pebbles with the panda bear on the cover.

mix in the cereal

Then one winter day, I poured in some nonpareils for giggles. Nonpareils, known technically as sprinkles where I come from, add a splash of color and a crunch to the texture. Since Jeremy is recovering from a cold, I made a batch of sprinkle rice crispy treats to cheer him up and to time warp back to the memories of my youth - when people actually made food instead of unwrapping it. Do it your way.

to put a smile on someone’s face

Rice Crispy Treats

1/4 cup butter
10 oz marshmallows
6 cups rice crispy cereal (or cocoa crisp cereal)
1/2 cup peanut butter (optional)
spinkles (optional)

Grease a 9×13-inch baking dish. Melt butter in a pan over medium heat (with peanut butter if using). When melted, add marshmallows and stir until melted. Remove from heat. Add cereal and mix well. If using sprinkles, add sprinkles and mix well (add more, and some more). Pour contents into baking dish and spread evenly. When cooled, cut into squares and serve.

My dear mate in Sydney sent me a package of Aussie goodies this past week. Kell is such a doll. When I was in Sydney in March, she and Jerad took me on a grand food tour of the city - as much as they could stuff into me in four days! While traveling in Oz, the goto cookie is the Tim Tam. Jeremy and I bought several sleeves while we wandered the Red Centre in the mind-altering heat. Sydney was a breezy welcome in contrast to Alice Springs. I must admit that while we travel New Zealand, I forgo the Tim Tam in favor of Chit Chats. I can’t help it, I just like Chit Chats better. But Tim Tams scream Oz to me and you love it for the nostalgia as well as the sugar rush.

behold, ye tim tam

I learned about the Tim Tam Slam from the lovely Aussie members of the Daring Bakers. In case you have just happened upon the food blog scene, the Daring Bakers are the best bunch of friendly, talented, and creative bakers online or anywhere for that matter. A wonderful group. So what IS the Tim Tam Slam, you ask? It’s quite simple and simply hilarious. You will need a Tim Tam (or two, three, four…) and a cuppa. Since I don’t drink coffee, I asked Jeremy to be the guinea pig. He was more than willing. Bite off the opposite corners of the Tim Tam. Well, go ahead and eat a whole cookie first, then bite the corners off the second cookie.

try not to eat it all at once

have the caffeine close at hand

Bring your hot cup of coffee close in and place one bitten end in the coffee and suck the coffee up through the other end with your mouth.

good technique considering he’s a yankee first timer

Jeremy reports that the cookie quickly becomes soggy and disintegrates within a few seconds. In that time, you will be able to get a trickle of coffee through, flavored with the delicious chocolatey-ness of the Tim Tam, before quickly shoveling the entire mess into your mouth for a moment of sheer bliss.

Thanks to Kell for the Tim Tam fix! Thanks to the Aussie DBer’s for the Tim Tam Slam! No one should be allowed to have this much fun in a single morning.