Chunky Peanut Brittle

My mum really likes peanuts and I decided to make her some edible gifts for Mother's Day recently, so thought that peanut brittle would be fun to try. It looked very easy to make and the recipe is indeed very simple, but as I discovered quite easy to get wrong!

 

I used this recipe thinking it was by Nigella Lawson, but realised afterwards it was posted in the community section of her website.

All you need is 100g peanuts and 100g caster sugar. Heat the sugar in a small pan over a low heat until it is caramel coloured. I learnt that it can turn very quickly and start to burn so you do need to keep an eye on it!

The recipe I used said to add the peanuts, then pour onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. But as soon as I added the peanuts to the hot sugar in the pan, they clumped together and set almost straight away. Peanut brittle is supposed to be flat, thin and - well, brittle - and by the time I was able to get it onto my baking parchment it was already in big clumps. So what I would recommend trying is spreading out your peanuts on the baking tray lined with parchment and then pouring the sugar over the top.

Mine set very quickly - it didn't even need to go in the fridge - and I broke it up into pieces and put it in a little box. I thought it tasted quite nice even if it didn't look quite right!

Regular readers may have noticed that I like to make foods inspired by fiction, whether that's movies or books. This recipe fits in with a blog challenge called Novel Food, hosted by Simona at Pulchetta.com. I read a lovely book recently by Jenny Colgan called Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams, about a woman who moves to a small village to look after her elderly aunt, who runs the local sweetshop. She ends up learning a lot about her aunt, and herself - and sweets! Each chapter of the book begins with either a recipe or a passage from her aunt's notebook about a particular type of sweet and there is one chapter which begins with a passage on peanut brittle. So that was also partly what inspired me to make this recipe, and for that reason I'm sharing this post with Simona for her challenge.

I'm also sending this to Treat Petite, as their theme this month is mums and I made this for my mum! The challenge is hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat aka The Baking Explorer.