Best Peanut Brittle Recipe

By Foodiewife

Ingredients

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 cup peanuts
• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Preparation

Step 1

Grease a large cookie sheet. Set aside.

In a heavy 2 quart saucepan, over medium heat, bring to a boil sugar, corn syrup, salt, and water.

Stir until sugar is dissolved.

Stir in peanuts. Set candy thermometer in place, and continue cooking. Stir frequently until temperature reaches 300 degrees F (150 degrees C), or until a small amount of mixture dropped into very cold water separates into hard and brittle threads.

Remove from heat; immediately stir in butter and baking soda; pour at once onto cookie sheet. With 2 forks, lift and pull peanut mixture into rectangle about 14x12 inches; cool. Snap candy into pieces.

TIPS:
Great Brittle. A few tips: Be sure to have butter and baking soda measured out beforehand and waiting, (and butter softened) stir them in well to mix, but dont stir it to death. when it is foamy and pale, stir a few times more, and then stop. I doubled the recipe (a single recipie for a single household, double it to share with anyone) and used a half-sheet size (read: about 17"x13" with a lip on it about an inch tall. I covered the pan with extra-wide aluminum foil and buttered the foil, and the sides of the foil. As soon as you are done stirring the stuff in, pour it onto the foil, and spread it out. I did this by picking the pan up and kind a shaking it around. If you try to spread it around like frosting, you'll end up breaking all those beautiful little bubbles that make it crunchy but light. Have fun!

This is my first time making candy, and it was awesome!! I added the teaspoon of vanilla as suggested, and almost 2 cups of peanuts. The only thing I would do differently is less peanuts. My sis-in-law liked the extra peanuts. So of course, I think it depends on what you like more, the candy or the peanuts. Very easy. By the way, have a pot of BOILING water that you can place your utensils in immediately to help with clean up.

While stirring, the candy takes quite a little time to get to the desired temperature, and CONSTANT stirring is not necessary. But WATCH OUT...once it gets to around 250 degrees it RAPIDLY shoots up to the 300 degree temperature and you need to be right on top of it. I learned to let it stay at the 300 degree point for a bit to brown the candy and the peanuts. It gave it a GREAT flavor, but BE CAREFUL!!!

A couple of suggestions--even though the amount of liquid is originally not very large, be sure you use a large pot since the extremely hot, sticky mixture foams up to many time its original size when the butter and baking soda are added. Also, don't dump out the mixture onto the cookie sheet in just one place and expect you'll be able to spread the peanuts around evenly afterwards--you'll crush all the bubbles. A better tactic would be to pour the mixture out onto the cookie sheet in a circular pattern so the peanuts are evenly distributed to begin with, then tilt the pan to get the liquid spread evenly.