New Orleans Pralines

All the talk about New Orleans, pecans and pralines last weekend put me in the mood to try my hand at making homemade pralines again.

Two years ago, one of my coworkers brought in a box of Aunt Sally's Creamy Pralines and I fell in love with them. I found a recipe on Allrecipes for pralines, but they ended turning out too sugary (in terms of being crystallized rather than creamy in texture) and they stuck to the foil to boot!

This time around, I found a simple recipe that I hoped would replicate the Aunt's Sally's pralines I remembered so fondly:

New Orleans Pralines
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup light cream
1 ½ cups pecans, halved
2 tablespoons butter
I also added 1 teaspoon of vanilla

1. Combine sugars and cream in a heavy 2-quart saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until mixture forms a thick syrup.
2. Add pecans and butter and continue to cook over medium heat, stirring frequently.
3. Remove sauce pan to a heatproof surface (such as a wire rack) and let cool for 10 minutes.
4. Use a tablespoon (another chance for me to use my Oxo cookie scoop) to drop rounded balls of the mixture onto sheet wax paper or foil, leaving about 3 inches between each ball for pralines to spread. Allow to cool.

Makes about 12 candies. I ended up with 19.

Here's all the ingredients cooking - I used my candy thermometer to make sure the mixture hit at least soft ball stage:


I ended up cooking it for too long, so in full disclosure, ended up adding another 1/4 cup of cream and cooking for a few more minutes.

Finally, after cooling for 10 minutes, the syrup was ready to be scooped onto wax paper:

I can't wait for them to cool - caramel and pecan mixed together is an irresistible combination!