Peanut Brittle - SMS

Knowing we were going to be out of town this weekend, I made this recipe in advance. I always feel good when I have a SMS post ready to go before Sunday. Am I glad I made this in advance? Absolutely, this was one of those problem recipes.

I gathered all of the ingredients in advance, read the recipe a couple of times and began cooking the caramel. I've read about how challenging caramel can be. I was a little nevous about this recipe. I think that was my problem! The recipe is like an animal, it smells my fear. I've made caramel before without any problems. Not so lucky this time. This recipe calls for cooking the sugar and corn syrup on medium high. I wondered if that was too hot but did it anyway. The caramel mixture hadn't been on the stove very long and I noticed it was starting to smoke. Panic! Our smoke detector is wired into our alarm and I didn't want it to go off. I opened the kitchen windows and the backdoor. It started smoking even more. I grabbed the pan and wanted to run to take it outside to the deck. Knowing how my luck was going that particular day, I decided running wasn't a good plan. I walked as quickly as I could and let it smoke away outside. Time to start over but I used all of the corn syrup, so I will be starting over another night.

Never having made peanut brittle before, I didn't really know what to expect. I went to the internet and began reading recipes for peanut brittle. After reading a number of recipes, I decided two things. One, this recipe uses way too high of a temperature to cook the caramel. Second, most of the other recipes used a little water along with the sugar and corn syrup. When I made the second batch, I followed Melissa's recipe except I added 1/4 cup of water and cooked the caramel on medium. This time went much more smoothly, until the final step. One stick of butter is way too much butter. I couldn't get it to incorporate smoothly. As a result, my peanut brittle is a big greasy.

I've never been a big peanut brittle fan. Give me chocolate anything instead. :) I thought this tasted just okay. Tim said it was pretty good. I am anxious to read what the other SMS bakers thought of this recipe.


This week's recipe was chosen by JoVonn of the Givens Chronicles, you can find the recipe on her blog. If you'd like to check out the other SMS baker's peanut brittle, you can find them here.