Candied Walnuts

Lately I have been eating spinach, raspberry, and walnut salads for lunch. It's my attempt to eat healthier. I have never really appreciated walnuts before. Maybe it's the fact that spinach is so bad that I can't help but think the walnut and raspberry bites are delicious. Anyway, of course eating such a healthy lunch makes me think of unhealthy things, mainly, " Wow I bet these walnuts would taste even better if I candied them!" And so I did, and they were better:)

I found three different recipes for candied walnuts and decided to start with the most simple one which happened to come from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. I may yet try the other two, just for comparison purposes (and snacking purposes) but for now I've only tried one.

I heated water, sugar, and a splash of lemon juice in a little saucepan until it turned "golden amber." Of course the edges turned golden amber first, so I wasn't sure if I should wait for the whole thing to change color or not. I waited a little but decided it was time to add the walnuts.

I stirred it up got everything nicely coated and then decided to add some more walnuts.

Martha's recipe said to take each walnut half out individually with a fork and lay them out on parchment. I can just imagine her lining everything up perfectly. Well, obviously this didn't work out for me. I tried using tongs (at least I had the foresight to know a fork wouldn't work for me) but the nuts got soooo sticky that they wouldn't come off. So I made a snap decision to just dump the whole pot out onto the silpat and then try to spread them out. This worked for a little bit, but as you can see, some sections were walnut brittle. I let it cool and then broke it all apart. It was all gone in 2 days. Yum!