By Christmas week. The house is all lit up, the presents are wrapped and under the tree, and I've been in the kitchen almost continuously since Monday. This is my favorite kind of busy — purposeful, sensory, festive. Every December I bake the same rotation: spritz cookies, pecan sandies, peppermint bark, and the almond cream cheese cookies that my grandmother only made at Christmas and that I've reverse-engineered close enough to fool my mother.
Christmas Eve we do the same dinner we've done for years: beef tenderloin, creamed spinach, twice-baked potatoes, soft dinner rolls. It's the most labor-intensive meal I make all year and I do it gladly because everyone sits at the table and nobody is in a hurry and the candlelight makes everyone look beautiful. Gary opened a bottle of red wine he'd been saving. Ethan tried a small glass for the first time and made a face that made everyone laugh.
Christmas morning: the chaos of children at their best. Even Ethan, who is fifteen and building the exterior of cool, sat in the middle of the wrapping paper with a look of uncomplicated happiness. Noah got a small kitchen set — a toy one, but with real-looking pots — and immediately set up shop next to me and made "soup." He used wooden vegetables and a lot of sound effects.
The year is almost over. A year in which I filmed my first video and watched it reach 40,000 people, started teaching at a food pantry in Provo, and realized my kitchen-table workshops have become something with a shape I didn't plan. I don't know what comes next. I never do. But I'm not afraid of it.
After a week of spritz cookies, pecan sandies, and the grandest beef tenderloin dinner I pull off all year, I wanted one more thing on the counter —something that felt celebratory and a little bit indulgent, something I could wrap up in cellophane and tuck into a neighbor’s bag or leave out for anyone who wandered through the kitchen. Mixed Nut Brittle has that quality: it’s showy without being fussy, and it tastes like the holidays smell. With Noah running his toy soup kitchen beside me and Ethan’s rare, uncomplicated smile still fresh in my mind, making a batch of something sweet and shareable felt like exactly the right way to close out Christmas week.
Mixed Nut Brittle
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 24
Ingredients
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 cup light corn syrup
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 cups mixed nuts (cashews, almonds, peanuts, and pecans), roughly chopped if large
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more for sprinkling
Instructions
- Prepare your surface. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or lightly buttered parchment paper. Set it near the stove —you’ll need to move fast once the brittle is ready.
- Cook the sugar syrup. Combine the sugar, corn syrup, and water in a heavy-bottomed 3-quart saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan. Cook without stirring until the mixture reaches 250°F (soft-ball stage), about 8–10 minutes.
- Add the nuts. Stir in the mixed nuts and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the thermometer reads 300°F (hard-crack stage), another 8–10 minutes. The mixture will turn a deep amber color.
- Finish and aerate. Remove the pan from heat immediately. Quickly stir in the butter, vanilla extract, and salt until fully combined. Add the baking soda and stir vigorously —the mixture will foam and expand. This is what gives brittle its light, airy crunch.
- Spread the brittle. Pour the mixture onto the prepared baking sheet at once. Using a buttered spatula or the back of a buttered spoon, spread it as thin as you can work it before it sets. Sprinkle lightly with additional sea salt if desired.
- Cool and break. Let the brittle cool completely at room temperature, about 20 minutes. Once fully hardened, break it into irregular shards with your hands or the back of a wooden spoon. Store in an airtight container at room temperature, layers separated by parchment, for up to 2 weeks.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 175 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 27g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 110mg