Ever since I attended the All About Almonds event back in November, I’ve found myself addicted to the things. That’s partly because they sent us home with pounds of almonds in various forms, and I’ve been eating them for months, but one item in the swag bag – a package of cinnamon-sugared almonds – intrigued me enough that I’ve been making my own for a while now, working with various ratios and spices to get the perfect addictive product.
There are many different processes for candying nuts. Some recipes called for whipped egg white (which create almost a meringue coating), others instruct cooks to remove the nuts from the boiling sugar and water solution with a slotted spoon and roll in spices and more sugar before toasting, while others still require letting the sugar brown and caramelize. Every method creates a different type of candy coating and once you get spices in there, the options are even more vast.
This final one might just be the keeper, though, as the flavours really seemed to work nicely and the coating has a good texture.
We love these as a snack to replace regular candy or cookies, and almonds are so healthy that we can almost feel virtuous about eating them, even with a tiny bit of sugar and butter in the recipe.