Breaking my schedule for Brittle

Breaking my Schedule for Brittle

We are still working with water and in this case we are boiling.  Brittle is usually a yummy treat that you can find around the holidays.  There is a certain someone  (M.E.) who makes an AMAZING peanut brittle and will not share the recipe.  My mom loves this peanut brittle and we wish we could re-create it.  I was excited to try this and see what all the hype was all about.  I have never made brittle but according to my mom it is pretty easy.  My grandma even makes it quite often.  This does not have peanuts in them but pumpkin seeds.  I honestly have never had pumpkin seeds and wasn't even sure where to find it.  The kiddos and I went to Fry's and looked in the section where you can chose the amount of product and package it yourself? What is that thing called anyways?  There were those green seeds.  Back to the house we went with the green pumpkin seeds.  They sat in my pantry for a couple of days and then I finally decided at 1:20pm on Friday that I would whip this up for an after school snack.  I started with 2 cups of pumpkin seeds.

I placed 1 tbsp of oil into a medium size pan and then toasted the seeds by constantly stirring.  I did not leave the stove because I was so afraid to burn them.

After the seeds were lightly brown and I could smell them, I removed the seed and covered them with cayenne pepper, cinnamon, salt.

Next is the sugar mixture.  The recipe stated to use 3 cups of sugar and added it to the water and bring to a boil.  Anyone forgetting something????  How much water????  I quickly looked up online this exact recipe and its said something like 12 oz of water.  What did we ever do without high speed internet.  Or any internet for that matter.  Ok, quickly did the math and added 1 1/2 cups of water.  Stirred until the sugar was dissolved.

Then I brought it to a boil, covered it for 5 minutes and then took the lid off.  It then said to leave it alone for another 5 minutes.

At this point, you basically continue to let it boil on medium heat until the liquid becomes an amber color.

In the book it says 15-20 minutes.  I look up at the clock and notice I have 20 minutes until I need to pick up Ry from school.  Ok, I can do it......  20 minutes later, it looked like this.

Not as AMBER as I was hoping but I couldn't wait any longer so I quickly pulled it from the heat, added the seeds and poured it onto a sheet pan lined with a sill pad and off I ran to the car to get Ryan.

When I got home it looked like this.

I took a taste.  :(  Lets just say that it was NOT the amber color apparently.  The flavor was ok and I enjoyed the slight heat that came from the cayenne pepper but the sugar portion was gritty tasting.  Either I didn't let it get amber enough or I didn't let the sugar dissolve all the way?  Either way, we all had one piece and the rest went into the garbage.  :(

I most definitely will try this again.  Hoping to do it when I don't have to go pick up my kids mid cooking time.  I might even have to go ask my grandma for some advice.  Either way, this was not good eats because of lack of patience and poor planning.  I will keep you posted if I try it again.