Hi everyone. If you have been around here lately you may have noticed the mess from BEA everywhere – books, notes, swag stuff…. I have literally been chatting BEA all week-long.
Ummm…. can you say “addict?”
This is my post for Weekend Cooking the weekly meme from Beth Fish Reads. Earlier this week I talked about a dinner at Mercer’s Kitchen in New York with the amazing Beth Hoffman. I had also mentioned the delicious spiced almonds we had while sitting at the bar and waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. Since coming home… my mind has still been thinking about the almonds. 😛
With a little help from Google (my gosh… what did we do before Google?) I found a recipe that I thought would be fun to try to see if I can come close to the awesome experience I had at Mercer’s Kitchen.
Spiced Almonds
Yields 2 cups (I doubled this as I am that much in love with these!)
You will need:
2 cups raw almonds (you can use another nut…. but my fav is the majestic almond)
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons brown sugar (packed)
3 tablespoons white granulated sugar
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ – ¾ teaspoon cayenne powder
½ teaspoon salt
Directions:
Prepare counter space or a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper or foil to place nuts to dry. Set aside. Take the sugars and spices and mix well in a medium size bowl. In a large dry saute pan on medium heat stir in the almonds and continue stirring frequently to avoid burning. Once they are well heated, then stir in the butter. Once almonds are well coated, transfer to the bowl with the spices and coat well. Put the almonds on the prepared paraffin wax or foil. Spread them apart so they can cool, separating with a fork.
That’s it.
Results?
It’s close. The spices did not stick as well to the nut as they had at Mercer’s Kitchen. (Any advice on what would make that happen is welcome :D)
I think these would go well with a cold beverage of choice – The Lemonade recipe here would go well.
Book Journey 
MMM! Those sound so very good! I can see why you’re still thinking about them. 😀
So, are you going to be trying variations on the recipe in the next couple weeks? :p
They were super tasty at Mercer’s Kitchen Hannah. I will definitely give it another go but found out today I really did not need to do a double batch. that made a ton and I need someone to eat them besides me 😀
I would make these for friends coming over and a snacky item to have while hanging out on the deck.
That sounds lovely and easy enough to try out. So is the taste sweet mainly? I can’t imagine what the cumin and cayenne pepper and salt would do together with the sugar. Very interesting!
Its not overpoweringly sweet – kind of spicy – chick I like. (Oh and LOL…. reading your comment I thought… salt? Yeah – I forgot the salt.) 😯
Still good though….
Ok so between your post and mine we can pretend we’re back at Mercer Kitchen having a great time gabbing with each other and our friends. Thanks for this.
I like that plan… it was fun to try to make them 😀
They sound delicious! I love spiced nuts! I do a version with pecans, but you can just as soon use almonds. I boil them first and while they are hot you mix them up with the spices. Then bake in the oven. Maybe moist from the boil and then baked will help the spices to stick.
Great thoughts Carol – thanks! I bet if the brown sugar had a chance to get warm in the over it would stick better.
Those wouldn’t even make it into a container…I’d eat them all!
LOL – thats why they had to go int he container Staci 😀
Those nuts do look addicting! The jar does match my brown rice jar. Did you find at Target or somewhere else?
Michelle I dont even know where it came from… it had been in my possession a long time and I actually had to dust it off when I pulled it off the shelf today as I do not use it very often 😀
This does sound good! Almonds are very healthy, although the stuff you put on may not be…LOL
We had almonds a lot when I was a kid, since I grew up on a peach and almond farm.
Thanks for sharing….
The sugars and butter probably take away a bit of the health factor Laurel but I do like almonds plain too.
Sorry to hear they didn’t turn out the way you expected. Maybe there’s something in my Sweet ‘n Spicy Nuts recipe that you could use to tweak?