It's the Brittle things in Life

Brittles

Here are a few little brittle recipes I've learned/tried, hopefully you'll find them as intriguing as I.

~DKH

Useful Precooking instructions:

1. Sugar is a type of hydrocarbon, just like fats, alcohols and gasoline--so if you're cooking with sugar, you should exercise caution because it can, and will, burst into flames if left unattended over high heat. If you've ever roasted a marshmallow a bit too long, you know what happens...
2. DO NOT leave your pot of boiling sugar (flammable material) unattended.
3. Always add the theme ingredient before you start cooking--this allows any water trapped inside to come up to temperature slowly and escape, instead of exploding in your face.
4. NEVER choose a theme ingredient that might contain enough water to cause it to pop or burst (unpopped popcorn kernels for instance)--you could get very seriously burned.
5. USE a candy thermometer--it is just way easier...a digital one is probably the best option because there is no risk of any mercury leaking out into your candy.

Materials:
 1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water
1 cup theme ingredient*
 2 tbsp butter/margarine
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda (NOT powder, trust me on this one)

Methods: 

Place the first five ingredients into a 2 qt sauce pan, and heat them over medium-high heat and stir to dissolve sugar. Monitor the sugar mixture temperature constantly until it reaches 300 F (150 C), which is the hard crack stage for you candy makers out there (for more on why it's called "hard crack", look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_crack#Sugar_stages). When the sugar reaches the right temperature, turn off the heat, and quickly stir in the remaining three ingredients. Pour the mixture onto a greased pan or a silicone baking sheet. Smooth out candy and allow it to cool before cracking it into large pieces. Enjoy!

*So, here is where I make suggestions to you as to the types of brittles you can make with this recipe. As a general rule, you should use things that have little or no water in them (the reason is because the water will turn to steam and either explode or increase your cook time). Here are some suggestions:

• Salted Peanuts
• Banana Chips (the fried ones)
• Almonds, walnuts, cashews, etc.
• Pretzels, corn chips, etc. (I've never tried these, but they could be interesting)
• Any combination of the above

 Here is some delicious banana chip brittle I made:

For those who want to know a bit more about the theory of candy making...specifically cooking with sugar, continue reading:

Okay, so first of all, it's a bit useful to notice that we are cooking at temperatures well above boiling point, so it makes sense that adding water (or anything containing water) might cause an explosion due to rapid steam production. So you might be asking yourself: why does the recipe call for water in the first place?? Well, in order to make candy, a few things need to happen. First, a solution of boiling sugar must be made--in order to completely dissolve the granulated sugar, we add some water to help that out. As the solution heats, the boiling point of water is reached 212 F (100 C). You may notice that your mixture seems to climb up to this temperature quickly before halting for a while at the boiling point...after some seemingly arbitrary length of time, the solution begins to heat again until you reach your desired temperature. The reason this halting occurs is that there is still water in the solution which takes up energy to form steam--stopping the temperature for rising. Once all or most of the water is gone, the temperature can continue to rise because energy is no longer being used to create steam. Secondly, in order to form a smooth candy, we would like the sugar to cool in such a way as to create crystals of a size that we can control. This second point is really mostly important when creating things like fudge, caramel, syrups, etc. To avoid losing control of the crystal formation in our candy, we make sure we have a completely dissolved sugar solution. If ANY sugar crystals are left in our solution prior to cooling, they can act as nucleation points (for more on THAT subject, consult your closest thermodynamics expert) for undesired crystal formation. You may notice that in some recipes, they suggest keeping a lid on your candy while it cooks/cools in the pot...this is precisely to allow the steam that escapes from the water you've added to condense and roll down the edges of the pot--washing any undissolved crystals on the edge of the pot back into solution to be dissolved completely. Okay, I could really go on a long time about this subject--perhaps I'll write an entire post about the fundamentals of candy making...for now, try out the recipe above...and enjoy!