Add the water and 1 cup of sugar to a heavy bottom saucepan or skillet with sides.

Bring it to a boil over medium-high heat.

Once boiling, add in the almonds and stir CONSTANTLY until the water is boiled away. The sugar will begin to dry out a little and start to stick to the almonds. Keep stirring them around, so that the almonds don’t have a chance to burn on the bottom of the pan.

One the almonds begin looking dry, turn the heat under the pan to medium-low, to keep the sugar from browning too fast. Keep stirring until the almonds start to get a little shiny in spots.

You are getting a serious arm workout making these – but its all good! It means you can eat extra!!

Now remove your pan from the heat for a minute, add in the extra ¼ cup of sugar (or flavored sugar mixture). Keep stirring.

At this point, there might be some noise ensuing from your pan. Some crackling and popping, but hopefully not to much. It depends on how fresh your almonds were. Really fresh almonds will make a popping noise and the coat may start to crack. That’s the water in the almonds escaping. If the almonds are older, that will not really happen.

Keep stirring until the almonds are a little shiny, but still a bit lumpy and coated. T

he best ones are the ones that are shiny in some areas with some delicious lumps of cinnamon sugar on other parts of the almond. As soon as you see that happening, take them off the heat and transfer the almonds to a sheet of parchment paper. Spread them apart as much as you can, but don’t worry about some of them sticking together initially.

BE CAREFUL, however. These are extremely hot, so use a spoon. The coating on the almonds will harden up more after they are completely cooled.

Watch my 1 minute TikTok video to see how it is done.