Gram's Favorite Peanut Brittle

Peanut brittle is a classic homemade gift for the Christmas season. It’s one of those recipes where the ingredients become way greater than the sum of their parts. Who would think that sugar, syrup and peanuts could be transformed into something so divine?

Earlier this year, in June to be exact, we drove from Houston to New Iberia, Louisiana to spend a couple of days with my grandmother. She was in a rehab center, working on getting strong enough to go home again, after surgery to repair her broken femur.

Just before we left, I called my Aunt Nonnie. What can we bring for Gram? Her answer was all candy:  Peanut brittle, licorice and orange slices.  Never mind that Gram had been diabetic for years, she loved her sweets. When you reach the ripe old age of 99, screw the diabetes!

So, off we went on a candy hunt.  My mother, an integral part of the search team, said that she always bought Gram a tin of peanut brittle from Costco, or maybe Sam’s, each Christmas because that’s the only time of the year it was available. I must admit I was shocked. I had no idea that peanut brittle was a Christmas-season-only thing!  I guess I’ve lived outside of the US for too long, in places where peanut brittle is never available. Sadly, she was right.

We brought Gram orange slices and licorice and substituted something else for the peanut brittle. But I always regretted that I couldn’t find any. As I said to Mom, if I had known ahead, I’d have made some. So, Gram, this batch is for you. I am imagining that your heaven includes a daily supply of peanut brittle but I still wanted to make you some.

Gram's Favorite Peanut Brittle

Ingredients to make 1 lb+ or 475g of peanut brittle
1 cup or 200g sugar
1/2 cup or 120ml light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup or 60ml water
1 cup or 150g shelled raw peanuts
2 tablespoons butter plus more for greasing foil.
1 teaspoon baking soda

Method
Line a baking pan with foil and then butter the foil liberally.  Set aside.

Put the sugar, corn syrup, water and salt in a heavy 2-quart pot, and stir until all the sugar is dissolved.  Add in the peanuts and stir again.

If you have a candy thermometer, attach it to the pot now.  Cook over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the thermometer reaches 300°F or 149°C or until a small amount dropped into a glass of very cold water turns into hard and brittle threads as it sinks.

Remove from heat and stir in the two tablespoons of butter and the baking soda.

Pour the now frothy mixture immediate into your prepared pan.

My original instructions from Good Housekeeping suggested that I use two forks to stretch and spread the mixture in the pan but I found that jiggling the pan vigorously did the trick.

See how it has spread almost to the corners now.

When the peanut brittle is cool enough to handle, use your hands to break the brittle into smaller pieces.  Share with someone you love.

Enjoy!


Visit all the other Christmas Week Peeps for more Holiday Baking Goodness:

• How To Make Perfect Gingerbread People by Cravings of a Lunatic
• Slow Cooker Pumpkin Cobbler by Juanita's Cocina
• S'mores Fudge by Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks
• Cherry Noir Noel by Noshing With The Nolands
• Japanese Blondies by Ninja Baking
• Peanut Brittle by Food Lust People Love
• Elf Nibbles by Dizzy Busy and Hungry
• Cheesecake Chocolate Chip Cookies with Salted Caramel by Rants From My Crazy Kitchen
• Gingerbread Men Cookies by Dinners, Dishes, and Desserts
• Mint Chocolate Chip Sugar Cookie Bars by Mom's Test Kitchen
• Penuche by Cooking In Stilettos
• Triple Orange Biscotti by Liv Life
• Homemade Caramels by Jen's Favorite Cookies
• Kerstol (Dutch Christmas Bread) by The Dutch Baker's Daughter
• Dark Chocolate Orange Ricotta Tart with Honey Almond Crust by Cupcakes & Kale Chips
• Tropical Toffee Brittle by Home Cooking Memories
• Chocolate Raspberry Linzer Cookies by Pineapple and Coconut
• Lemon-Pistachio and White Chocolate Biscotti by The Little Ferraro Kitchen

Pin Gram's Favorite Peanut Brittle!

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Gram's Fig Spice Bundt Cake with Buttermilk Glaze for #BundtaMonth

This summer I went to a farmers’ market in New Iberia, Louisiana with my grandmother.  We bought a bunch of figs and I made her fig preserves.  I mean I made fig preserves for her, from HER own recipe.  Simplest recipe ever and you can find it here.  On that same visit, she let me clear out the drawer of recipes and cookbooks that she had accumulated over the years and take them home with me.  Amongst them, I found her handwritten recipe for fig cake with buttermilk glaze.

Unfortunately, I had sent her all the fig preserves I made so, how to make the cake?  Until I found this on the shelf at my local Carrefour in Cairo.

Back in business!  Are the Carrefour preserves as a good as Gram’s homemade ones?  Probably not.  But this cake is awesome and delicious and it is also my contribution for November’s edition of BundtaMonth where we are making spice cake.  Scroll on down to the bottom of this post to see links to all the lovely spice Bundt cakes that have been made this month.   Gram has a serious sweet tooth and I think she would like them all!  Many thanks to our hosts for this challenge:  Anuradha at Baker Street and Lora at Cake Duchess.

My grandmother will turn 99 years old next month – on 22 December - and we are hoping and praying that she continues in good health so we can celebrate 100 years next year.  And many birthdays thereafter.  We think she has a shot at a world record.  She still asks to go to the casino on her birthday because they give her free money to gamble!  We should all live so long and so well.

Here she is hopping up on the red swing in her yard last summer.  Red has always been her favorite color and the swing is her favorite place to hang out.

Her one true love lately is this cat she calls Minou. Which means Kitty in French.  All of her cats over the years have been called Minou.  Because she has a great sense of humor and it keeps life simple.

And one last photo where she is smiling.  That's a hard one to catch.  With her two youngest children, my Aunt Nonnie and Uncle Kippy. :)  My father is her eldest and he just turned 77 this month.  Imagine if your child is 77!  Love you, Gram!

Ingredients 
For the Bundt:
2 cups or 250g flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups or 340g sugar
1 cup or 225g butter, melted and cooled
1 cup or 240ml buttermilk
3 eggs
1 cup fig preserves (if using homemade, chop the figs and use the juice as well)
1 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans because I am pretty sure that’s what Gram would have used.)
1 teaspoon vanilla

For the glaze:
1 cup or 220g sugar
1/2 cup or 120ml buttermilk
1 tablespoon corn syrup or Lyle’s Golden Syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons or 60g butter

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease and flour your Bundt pan liberally.

Mix dry ingredients, add butter and beat well.

Add eggs one at a time, alternating with buttermilk.

Scrape down the bowl.

Then add figs, nuts and vanilla.  Beat for another couple of minutes on medium.

Pour into the prepared Bundt pan and bake for one hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool for at least 10 minutes then run a knife or wooden skewer around the pan edges to loosen.  I clearly overfilled my pan so I had to cut around the middle to make sure it would release.

Put your cake plate on top of the Bundt pan and invert.  If you have greased and floured it well, the cake should drop out easily.  Allow to cool completely.

While the cake is cooling, let’s make the glaze.  Mix all ingredients and boil for six minutes, stirring constantly.  The original recipe says three minutes but the glaze was very runny and I figured, even on a cooled cake, most of it would end up on the cake plate below.

Allow to cool until it thickens slightly.  Drizzle over cake.

This glaze hardens somewhat and turns almost clear on the cake, making a shiny sticky, chewy outside which is the perfect match for the tender crumb inside.  I cannot tell you how freaking good this is.  Hats off to you, Gram!  It’s a winner.

Enjoy!

Check out all the other BundtaMonth cakes for Spicy November:

Apple Bundt Cake with an Attitude by Deb | Knitstamatic

Blueberry Cinnamon Bundt Cake by Anuradha | Baker Street

Cardamom Bundt Cake with Rosewater Glaze by Paula | Vintage Kitchen

Cinnamon Crown Bundt Cake by Renee | Magnolia Days

Ginger Pear Bundt Cake by Holly | A Baker's House

Gingerbread Apple Cake by Lora | Cake Duchess

Gram's Fig Spice Bundt Cake with Buttermilk Glaze by Stacy | Food Lust People Love

Italian Anise Bundt Cake by Karen | In The Kitchen with KP

Maple Pecan Bundt with Maple Glaze by Jennie | The Messy Baker Blog

Mexican Chocolate Bundt Cake by Alice Choi | Hip Foodie Mom

Moroccan Inspired Olive Oil Bundt Cake with Ras El Hanout by Laura | The Spiced Life

Nutmeg Bundt Cake by Dorothy | Shockingly Delicious

Peach and Roasted Cinnamon Bundt Cake with Cinnamon Sugar by Kim | Cravings Of A Lunatic

Spiced Dark Chocolate with Cinnamon Glaze by Kate | Food Babbles

Spicy Chocolate Bourbon Bundt Cake by Carrie | Poet In The Pantry

Here’s how you can join #BundtAMonth  -

- Bake your Bundt for November following the theme – Spice.

- Post it before November 30, 2012.

- Use the #BundtAMonth hashtag in your title. (For ex: title should read #BundtAMonth: Chocolate Cinnamon Bundt)

- Add your entry to the Linky tool below

- Link back to both Lora and Anuradha’s announcement posts.

   

Gram’s Fig Preserves

When figs are in season, make this simple recipe for fresh fig preserves, and enjoy sweet figs all year long! Gram's fig preserves are great spread on a piece of buttered toast, spooned over pound cake or even baked into her special fig spice cake. 

This is a hard post to write without getting maudlin but I will try.  As my handful of Twitter followers and Facebook friends know, we spent last weekend in New Iberia, Louisiana with my aged grandmother. She is 98 1/2 years old which means (thanks to my friend, Jacky’s Gran, who started counting the year she was in at 93, rather than birthdays) she is in her 99^th year. Pretty impressive, I think!

My father and aunt have organized a lovely nurse/caretaker to come in Monday through Friday to care for her while my uncle, who lives with her, is off at work. On the evenings and weekends, he is in charge and is doing a good job. As we said to him, upon questions about the medications, he hasn’t killed her yet, so we figure he knows what he is doing. (Why he didn’t throw us out, I do not know.) Goodness knows, she has two different sets of pills, morning and evening, and if he can keep those straight, more power to him! We are grateful!

We arrived around 3:45 in the afternoon on Friday and her lovely nurse/caretaker, Tina, was still there to greet us. Bless her, then she stayed late just to make conversation and get to know us because her normal hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.  She calls my grandmother Ms. Margaret.

Her real name is Marguerite but throughout my childhood, her friends called her Mag or Maggie. On official records, her name is Margaret because when she started school back in 1919, French was forbidden and Marguerite would have been part of that prohibition. Her name was changed to Margaret to conform to the no-French rule. Imagine!

Both my maternal grandfather and my paternal grandmother did not learn English till they started school at six years old and the system - and the teachers - tried to stamp it out of them. The shame of that was that the next two generations of Acadiana French children were not allowed to speak their mother tongue at school and gradually it died out. (My grandparents’ generation still spoke it amongst themselves because it is hard to smother a child’s mother tongue.) I think my grandparents’ generation was the last to speak it fluently in Louisiana. I’ve been told that the public schools are teaching French again, but it is not the same. More's the pity.

Anyhoo, Tina got us talking about the character that my grandmother must have been when she was younger and telling stories on her. Oh, my goodness, the stories we could tell. Gram was the best grandmother ever. No was not in her vocabulary. “Gram, can we have some baby aspirin? (They tasted like orange Tic Tacs and we loved them.) The answer was “Sure. Help yourself.”

“Gram, can we borrow your steak knives? We want to have a knife throwing contest in the yard.”  - “You know where they are.”  I don’t even remember her saying, “just be careful.”  But, in fairness, possibly she did. And we lit bonfires, with permission – we mostly did ask, to our credit - and took group bubble baths and climbed trees, higher than was ever safe. And once we even took off walking to my other grandmother’s house a few miles away. Why? Who the heck remembers? Unsupervised much? Blissfully so. 

While cooking in my grandmother’s kitchen this past weekend, I discovered a drawer full of her old cookbooks and asked if I might take them home to look through them more carefully. (Cousins reading this, please know that I WILL RETURN THEM.) You know that the woman who let us take her steak knives in the yard for a knife-throwing contest (which, by the way, ended up with a knife up in my foot and a tetanus shot for yours truly) did not tell me no.  So I have a whole box of mostly cr*p cookbooks with the occasional gem in her handwriting, which is what I am looking for.

I discovered this one before we even left her kitchen.  Written on the front of a Steen Syrup giveaway pamphlet in my grandmother's handwriting. 

“Gram,” I said.  “Is this your recipe for the fig preserves you always made?”  “Yes,” she said.  It couldn’t be more simple.

Gram’s Fig Preserves

It doesn't get any easier than this - just two ingredients - figs and sugar - in a two to one ratio, for a whole lot of wonderful.

Ingredients - to make two pint jars

2.2 pounds or 1 kg or 5 1/2 generous cups of fresh figs

2 3/4 cups or 620g sugar

Method

Rinse the fresh figs well and discard the rinsing water. If your figs have hard stems, cut them off and discard.

Pour the sugar over the drained figs in a heavy-bottomed pot.

Put it on a medium flame, covered. You don't need to add water as this gets really juicy fairly quickly but that is a good thing. Cook for a while, perhaps half an hour, stirring very gently occasionally. You do not want the figs to break up. Gram always had whole figs in her preserve jars and so should you.

After about the first half hour, when all the sugar has dissolved, you can turn the heat up to medium high and take the lid off.  Cook until the syrup reduces by at least half.

Meanwhile, sterilize your jars/lids by pouring boiling water in them.  Then put one metal teaspoon in each jar.  This will keep the jars from breaking when you pour the boiling hot preserves in them.

2 half pint jars and 1 pint jar

When I cooked this down, I got 2 whole pints of preserved figs out of 5 1/2 cups or 1 kilo of figs and 2 3/4 cups or 620g of sugar.

Using a jam jar funnel, divide the figs and boiling syrup evenly between the jars.  Screw the lids on very tightly, with a dry towel and set them upside down.  As they cool, a vacuum seal will form and the preserves will be safe to eat for several weeks.

We bought the fresh figs at the Farmers’ Market on Main Street in New Iberia because Gram’s tree was hit by lightening a number of years ago and her replacement trees (planted with cuttings from my other grandmother’s tree!) are not producing yet. I’ve decided that the best thing I could do was to pack them up nicely and mail them on to her to enjoy. When you are 98 and 1/2, people should be making fig preserves for you. Don’t you agree?

Enjoy!