Candied Pecans Recipe

WARNING:

Please be aware that these candied pecans are highly addictive.

I cannot be held personally responsible

for any family squabbles that result from someone eating

more than their fair share.

As I promised about a week and a half ago in my post about the first Dreamtime Designs Craft Challenge, I'm finally sharing the recipe for some out of this world candied pecans.  You can see my first DDCC project here.  I'm really quite proud of it and would love for you to go take a quick look!

Now, let me begin the heart of this post by saying that this is NOT an original Chef Roberta recipe.  I found it several years ago and have just fine-tuned it for the quantities that I like to make.
I make a lot of these at once for 2 reasons:

1. They make awesome gifts for neighbors, co-workers,
Secret Santa exchanges, etc, etc....

2.  They are so delicious!!!!!

Here are the ingredients:

2 pounds pecan halves

Just under 1 cup (about 7/8) heavy cream

2 cups light brown sugar

Set your oven to 350 degrees or 325 degrees for a convection oven.
 I always use the convection feature so I highly recommend that if you have the option.

Mix all ingredients thoroughly until they look like this:

Make sure to really stir them around and get all of them evenly covered in the gooey goodness.

After you spray the bejeebers out of 2 cookie sheets with non-stick cooking spray, spread the coated pecans into relatively even layers.  Use the cooking spray even if you are using non-stick pans.
Don't ask me how I know that's a really good idea.

Your pecans should look like this:

You can see that they are a bit crowded on the sheet.
As long as you spread them to a pretty even layer, you're fine.

Put the 2 pans in the center of the pre-heated oven for 10 minutes.
After that 10 minutes, it's time to stir the pecans and switch positions of the sheet pans.

Your pecans should look like this when you take them out
after 10 minutes:

You can see that the gooey goodness has just started to appear a little dryer.  Stir them thoroughly making sure to get any of the brown sugar mixture from the corners of your pans.
Please be careful because hot sugar is much like a glue gun burn....
 not fun.

After you stir everything, the pecans will once again look wet.
This is what they will look like:

Now pop them back into the oven making sure that the pan that was on the upper rack previously is now placed on the lower rack.
(To help me keep track, I only take one pan out of the oven at a time.)

They will need another 7-10 minutes after they've been stirred.
Keep a very close eye on them!
Nuts and sugars both burn very quickly.

This is what you will see when they are finished:

Note that you can still see moistness on the bottom of the pan and a bit on the pecans.  That's okay!  In fact, if you don't see that little bit of shine you may have let them go too far.

Take them out of the oven and give them one last stir.
Be sure to really get all of the bits of brown sugar from the bottom of the pan.  Not only will that make clean up much easier but those are little nuggets of sugary heaven that you don't want to miss!

About 10-15 minutes of them coming out of the oven and you stirring them, they will look like this:

 Be careful!  The oils in the pecans can hold onto the heat for quite a while so make sure they've had plenty of time to cool before starting to nibble on them.

Keep them stored in an airtight container.  I wish I could give you an estimate on how long they will stay fresh....Let's just say they've never had a chance to go stale at my house.

I hope that my long, drawn out post doesn't scare you away from this recipe!  They are really easy to make and I just wanted to make sure that you had an idea of what to expect at each step.

Now, back to the gift giving option for these gems:
Out of a 2# bag of pecans, you can get 4 or 5 nice little packs for giving.  The bag of pecans cost about $12 at Sam's recently.  The brown sugar is minimal in cost and the cream cost a couple bucks.  So even if you package the pecans in a jar from a dollar store, the total cost per gift will be about $5 a piece if you do 4 gifts per recipe.  Or you can just put some into a cellophane bag and tie it with a pretty bow.....even cheaper.
Your friends will love you for it either way!

Thanks so much for spending time here today.
If you have any questions, please just let me know.