Pumpkin Spice Candied Nuts

Course: Appetizer, Snack

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Candied Almonds, candied nuts

Prep Time: 2

Cook Time: 8

Servings: servings

Calories: 233kcal

Author: Colleen Kennedy

One of the best snacks to make! Candied Nuts with Pumpkin Spice! Makes a great food gift or addition to cheese or charcuterie board.

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Ingredients

⅓ cup water
¾ cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
2 cups whole pecans
¼ cup Spiced Sugar or cinnamon sugar see notes for my recipe

Instructions

Add the water, ¾ cup of the sugar and pumpkin pie spice to a heavy bottom saucepan or skillet with sides. Use a larger pot/pan then you think you'll need, you want plenty of room and depth to stir without worry of splatter of nuts flying out.
As soon as liquid comes to a bubble, add in your nuts.
Stir almost constantly until the water is boiled away.
The sugar will begin to dry out a little and start to stick to the nuts, almost like a dust. Keep stirring them around vigorously, so that the nuts don’t have a chance to burn on the bottom of the pan. If you think its burning at all, remove from heat and keep stirring until it cools a bit (heat conductivity of pans and stoves will vary)
One the pecans begin looking dry, turn the heat under the pan to medium-low, to keep the sugar from browning too fast. Keep stirring until the nuts start to get a little shiny in spots, like they are wet again.
You are getting a serious arm workout making these – but its all good! It means you can eat extra!!
Remove your pan from the heat for a minute, add in the additional sugar (and if you want a nice pinch of salt and another shake or two of pumpkin spice spice) Keep stirring.
At this point, there might be some noise coming from your pan. Some crackling and popping, but hopefully not to much. It depends on how fresh your nuts were. That’s the water escaping from the fresher nuts. If the nuts are older, that will not really happen.
Keep stirring until the nuts are a little shiny in spots, but still a bit lumpy and coated.
The best ones are the ones that are shiny in some areas with some delicious lumps of cinnamon sugar on other parts of the nut. As soon as you see that happening, take them off the heat and transfer the pecans to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Spread them apart, 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 pecans will harden up as they cool.
Once completely cool, store in a glass jar.

Notes

Watch for burning. Use a large heavy pot and silicone or rubber spatula.

Use my Spiced Sugar recipe for the second addition of ¼ cup sugar OR use it for the whole thing in place of plain sugar, the flavor will be more intense. So tasty!

Nutrition