smitten kitchen

As it turns out, the last days of October don’t awaken in me a desire to fly around on my broom, don a “sexy” nurse/maid/fireman outfit or even gorge myself on candy. Nope, according to a quick glance at my archives, apparently when Halloween approaches all I can think about is reinterpreting Rice Krispie Treats.

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to choose my recipes very well. Last year’s Peanut Butter Crispy Bars were delicious, but had structural issues that irked me. And two years ago, I fell prey to a Caramelized Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treat that was all sorts of a styrofoam-textured disaster. Nevertheless, I haven’t been able to get them out of my head, so this year I decided I would conquer them once and for all. It helped that I knew exactly what went wrong the original dud of a clearly-untested recipe (hm, do I sound bitter?): the cereal to marshmallow ratio was unfeasibly high, more than double that of the original recipe and — small detail — marshmallows don’t caramelize very well, and should you succeed in getting them to, they don’t cool back down to anything gooey or soft. What a travesty.

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The first time I made marshmallows, well, I don’t think saying “it was a mess” adequately describes it. Oh, the marshmallows were successful; they even looked and tasted like marshmallows, but yours truly? I ended up in a tangled web of marshmallow strings.

It all went south when I couldn’t resist the urge to scrape down the paddle and bowl (anyone else an obsessive bowl scraper? I cringe when things go to waste). The paddle was gunked to the bowl and the scraper was glued to the paddle and then — and it is my duty to implore you not to do this at home — you think, “well, I’ll just wipe off the paddle with my index finger” and then your index finger gets knit to the scraper and then you think “well, let me use my other finger to wipe this one off” and all of a sudden, you’ve got strands of marshmallow strung from each finger to the bowl, the mixer, the paddle, the scraper, each corner of the pan, your shirt, the floor and then your husband comes home just as you’re pleading “help! I’m all knotted up!” and he instead gets the camera.

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Yes, crack. As in “made with crackers”, as in “crackly like toffee” but also in reference to the addictive nature of this stuff. I may make what seems like an elaborate cake a week these days, I might bake my own icebox wafers and fill and frost my cupcakes but these things right here? They’re the thing everyone asks for by name, and they take almost no time to make.

Thus, despite that fact that this recipe is incredibly easy to find elsewhere on the web, it only seems right to give it a home here as well. Because if there was one person out there that hasn’t made it yet that makes it after reading this, my work here will be done.

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I am, without a better way to put it, swimming in nuts.* Appalled by the price of nuts everywhere around here but insisting that it wasn’t going to keep me from baking with them, I asked my mother out in the ‘burbs — a place where people are less confident they can get away with swindling $9.99 for 1.25 cups of pecans — to see if she could do better. She came back with fifteen pounds for about $30 from Costco, five of walnuts, five of pecan and five of almonds. It is, in a word, awesome.

And yet, despite the fact that many of my favorite recipes involve them in one way or another, I had not made even the slightest dent in the almonds and only a paltry one in the pecans as of last week, and they’re taking up a lot of space in the pantry and freezer. (I believe this is called The Costco Effect.) Obviously it was time to break out the big guns, a recipe sure to be so addictive, pounds would disappear (from the pantry, not our guts, that is) at a breakneck pace and the only thing left to do (besides sit-ups) would be to ask my mother to go back to Costco again.

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Saying that you don’t usually care for brittle because it is, well, awfully brittle is definitely grounds for mockery.

But it’s true! I can’t tell you how unappealing I find stained glass-like sheets of amber caramel that you’re supposed to willingly bite into. You either get alarmingly sharp shards that stab you like a serial killer on the loose in your mouth, or it gets so gunked into the scoop of your molars, it takes a chisel to extract it.

Right, so where were we? My grievances with brittle in no way mean it can’t be good, just that it’s usually not. And previously, I never liked the stuff enough to find The Recipe, the one that will be all you need. Fortunately, with such inspiration as Luisa and Karen Demasco, this was perfect on the first try: buttery with an awesome depth of flavor that came from some accidental slightly overcooking and sea salt. Taking a bite, the pepitas just crackle within the caramel, and not so hard that it shatters everywhere.

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