Praline / caramel technique question

Question

Had some issues following a praline technique at start of recipe for double chocolate praline cookies.   Described in following link (with photos).  What did I do wrong?  And am I correct to be a little annoyed with the paltry detail in the recipe?  Or am I fully to blame b/c first time I only used cane sugar and second time it was a mix of cane and white granulated sugar?   Both times I used a heavy bottomed copper saucepan.  http://bit.ly/IJhQCA

helicopterina · Answer

thanks so much for your thoughtful reply.  i'll post back after trying this again with just white sugar.  but you're right, i hadn't tried to add nuts yet...i just got stymied both times by granularness of it all (and crystallization) and fact that i barely had opportunity to swirl a slowly moistening caramel...  am in nyc in december so it's not humid at all.

petitbleu · Answer

Hmmm...an interesting problem. The recipe sounds like it should work. Basically, to make a praline in its simplest form, you're just caramelizing sugar and adding nuts. Is it humid where you are? That can affect anything like caramel, candy making, etc. It's also possible that adding cold nuts to caramel would make it sieze up (although you don't say that you did this--I'm just making guesses). Always have the nuts warm before adding them to a caramelized sugar syrup. It could be the cane sugar, but it seems unlikely. Maybe try using just white sugar and see what happens. At the very least, candied nuts are delicious, so having more of them around isn't a bad thing ;)

Praline / caramel technique question

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