Walking through the mall, smelling those freshly roasted candied almonds, a hint of cinnamon in the air mixed with vanilla sweetness…. Why are those little delectable things so expensive??? The senses are wide awake, there is longing, but the pocketbook tells you to walk on by. Ignore, ignore. If you can. It just doesn’t seem fair, does it? Well, long no more! Here it is, the recipe that allows you to enjoy the scent AND the flavor, without breaking your piggy-bank! Better yet, it is so easy to do at home you’ll never want to waste your money at the mall ever again! This particular recipe is especially aroma filled, and adding a little extra salt to these gently sweetened almonds helps to bring out various flavors. They contain more vanilla than almonds from many other recipes, as well as extra cinnamon as well, though tastefully so and not over-the-top. Just more of the good stuff, more of what makes roasted, candied almonds so special. Addicting, that they are; be warned!
If you do try this recipe, I would really appreciate a quick comment with a star rating (option found immediately under each recipe). It helps me out tremendously! Thanks in advance!
Here are the steps to take you through it; not that you’ll need it, as the recipe itself is quite self explanatory. But, being a visual person myself, I always appreciate pictures whether I need them or not.
You start by measuring and mixing the various ingredients, and setting them aside so that they are ready when needed, without much delay. It is also a good idea to turn on the oven and prepare the cookie sheet at this time. Here goes:
Grease a cookie sheet with edges (I love mine, which is from Nordic Ware); the almonds will need stirring now and again. I like to use coconut oil, as it tolerates heat very well, and I have not found it to cause sticky build-up. Set the cookie sheet aside for now, and turn on the oven to 250° F to preheat.
Measure up sugar, brown sugar, salt, and cinnamon; pour it all into a small or medium sized mixing bowl. I doubled the recipe this time, as I needed extras to bring to two different events.
Mix together until well blended. Set aside.
Separate the egg (click this link if you need instructions; scroll down, you’ll see how I do it without any gadgets to help.) Using only the egg white, preferably at room temperature (they whip up better when warm), whip until frothy. What is frothy? Well, I just whip until it thickens a little and looks like thin foam. This time I decided to whip the egg white first, then add the vanilla afterward, but I think it works better to add it right from the start and whip the two together. So that’s my recommendation. Start whipping, and don’t stop quite yet:
This is more like it; a real good foamy froth. You can also do this by hand, using a whisk. A hand mixer is helpful, but not necessary. Since I doubled the recipe this time, I decided to use my KitchenAid stand mixer, though this mixer is actually a bit large for such a small amount, as it has a hard time grabbing onto only two egg whites. But, it works and is a great machine otherwise. This is actually my second KichenAid machine; I used to have a smaller version, but really needed the large one for the doubling and tripling of recipes that I often do.
I now added the vanilla, though like I said, you may want to add it right from the start.
(Use real vanilla extract if you can; imitation vanilla is just that. Imitation. If you have a Costco warehouse near you [or maybe Sam’s Club?], Costco’s Kirkland brand vanilla is very good and very inexpensive. I highly recommend it!)
I have found that if I don’t whip the egg white enough, it’s too thin to hold on to the sugar coating well. The egg white foam works as a glue to hold onto the sugar coating. Whipping it to a soft foam before adding the nuts, the sugar can stick better to the foamy almonds. Pecans aren’t quite as tricky, but almonds are very smooth and need all the help they can get. Regardless of when you decide to add vanilla, be aware that this foam doesn’t hold air for long. So if you have to take a break, you may need to whip them up again.
At this point, you can add the almonds to the whipped egg white. Pecans or other nuts can be used as well. I just set the mixing bowl directly onto my kitchen scale, and measure up what I need; this time I needed two pounds, since I doubled the recipe.
Gently mix the almonds into the egg white until well coated.
Pour the brown sugar mixture into the moist almonds, and stir gently again until well coated.
Spread the candied vanilla & cinnamon almonds evenly onto the greased baking sheet, in one layer if possible. With my double recipe, they were very crowded this time. I was curious how that would work out and if they would bake properly, and it ended up being OK with a little extra baking time. On this next picture, they are very wet and gooey.
Put in the preheated oven, and bake uncovered for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes. I baked this tray for an additional 30 minutes before fully roasted, since the recipe was doubled and the almonds were so crowded.
After every 15 minutes, take the tray out and stir/flip the almonds over so they can dry and roast on both sides. They look so hopelessly wet at this point, but trust me; they will dry and crisp up eventually!
After 15 more minutes, 2nd time of stirring. You can now see that they will come around.
After 45 minutes, third time, they look much better:
However, they do need a full hour, and in this case, 1 hour and 30 minutes was needed to ensure full crispness.
The almonds will be ready to serve as soon as they cool down, or if you like them warm, you can serve them as soon as they are cool enough to be handled. They are obviously extremely hot when you first take them out of the oven. If you let them cool, uncovered, they will crisp up nicely.
These wonderful, candied almonds seem to last a long time; we’ve had them last several weeks, covered in a bowl on the counter top, munching little by little. If we serve them to company, however, they quickly disappear as they are so filled with aroma from lots of real vanilla, brown sugar, and cinnamon. We have also found them to be a perfect teacher appreciation gift, or anytime we want to give an edible gift to someone, being that they are so easy to roast right at home. Please comment and rate this recipe if you try it; option is found immediately under the recipe. Thank you!!
- ½ c sugar
- ½ c dark brown sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 egg white
- 3 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 Lb almonds or pecans
- Preheat oven to 250° F.
- Grease a cookie sheet with edges, set aside.
- In a small bowl, mix together sugar, brown sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.
- In a medium sized mixing bowl, use a whisk or electric beater, and whisk egg white until frothy, resembling soft foam.
- Add vanilla, beat for another few seconds.
- Pour almonds into egg white, stir gently until coated.
- Pour sugar mixture into moist almonds, stir gently until coated.
- Pour sugar coated almonds onto the greased cookie sheet, and spread out to a single layer if possible.
- Bake, uncovered, for one hour, stirring and flipping almonds every 15 minutes, until crisp.Cool completely.
Thank you!!! I’ve been wanting to try these. They look absolutely delicious! 😉
I’m really thinking I should head over to Sam’s Club and stock up on some items. Do you know off hand what items are better for your pocketbook at the bulk stores than let’s say Meijer?
We have found vitamins, supplements and OTC medications to be much cheaper at Sam’s and Costco. We also like to get paper products there, spices for sure, and Sam’s has very reasonable 100% whole wheat breads; a little over a dollar each, I think, for one of the brands. If you compare their prices to regular super market prices, they may be more reasonable; but if you can get items on sale at regular stores, that can sometimes be cheaper than Sam’s or Costco. Spices are inexpensive at Costco, I don’t know how Sam’s run on that. Vanilla and cinnamon is dirt cheap at Costco! And Aldi products are often of good quality and can be much cheaper. I think they have a money-back plus get another item free, guarantee, but you may want to check with the store to be sure.
Drooling now………
These are delicious! I’ve been hoping you would share this recipe. Thanks!
Yum! They look delicious! And they are.
Thanks so much! 🙂
THANK YOU for satisfying my craving!!!
Do you recommend blanched or unblanched almonds and pecans?
Either way should be fine, but I have never blanched them for this recipe myself. Some people have digestive problems if the brown skin is left on, and it’s believed to be better for you if you do remove it, so if you certainly could try them blanched if you want to. If you do, let me know how it worked out and if they still looked nice.
These taste fantastic. I just cannot stop eating them!
At the top it says preheat oven to 225 then at the bottom it says 250, which one is it? I’m planningon making these today, they look delicious!
Thank you for pointing that out! Definitely a mistake on my part that I will correct. The temperature should be 250 degrees. It shouldn’t matter too much whether you pick one or the other, but it will probably take a bit longer to bake at the lower temperature. I always do 250. Have fun!
Just wonder if you have tried this recipe using honey or maple syrup?
No, I have not. If you do try it, I would love to know how it went. 🙂
Hi Terese,
I adored the roasted almond you made, I followed your instruction and tried myself. Yes, basically can’t stop. I have friend allergy egg white, is that any other ingredient to replace egg white to hold sugar well
I don’t know if there is something else you can use beside egg whites. Sorry!
Hey Terese,
You are truly… brilliant. thank you for reply my question. I heard of Ener-G which is egg white powder as replacment of egg white, not sure if this is natural or not. Also thinking of using flour instead but it possibly went harder when it just roasted, and gone soft ( not crispy) few days after absorb moist. Let me know if you have any good idea, will let you know if I found any replacement. thanks a lot, I really enjoy reading your web.
Thank you Donna for letting us know about this product, Ener-G! There are others too, of course, with egg white allergies, so it’s good to know. Egg white is nice in how it coats the almonds nicely, since it’s thick and slippery. I’m wondering if butter will work at all; it probably can’t hold on to too much of the sugar since it’s very liquid when melted, so ideally a thicker substance should be used. I will post here if I find something that will work nicely as a substitute for egg white.
Made these as written (no major tweaking of the recipe!), but I halved it and used pecans. Turned out great! Could have used a bit more cinnamon but that’s just my taste. I could taste the brown sugar but the cinnamon wasn’t coming through as much as I’d hoped. Otherwise, very yummy.
The recipe says one egg White but the instructions and photos say egg whites plural. How many???
I’m sorry, sometimes I double the recipe so that’s why I’ve sometimes used the word in plural. One single recipe uses only one egg, like the ingredient list says. I can see how that would be confusing so I’ll go through and change it to always be single. Thank you for pointing this out!
These are lovely. I couldn’t help but take one each time I pulled it out to stir it. I was worried there would be too much salt because the dry roast almonds I got was alread salted. I skipped out on half a tsp. Maybe it would have been fine I’m not sure, but they were wonderful. Mind you I made 2 1/2 lbs in one go. I was banking on these being good and they didn’t disappoint! The hardest part was letting them cool. Lol.
Good thinking on the salt! Yes, since you used almonds that were already salted, you were smart to cut back on the salt in the recipe. I’m thinking they could have ended up too salty had you used the full amount, with the extra salt already there. Nice job!!! And I’m so happy you enjoyed them and that they turned out good for you with the adjustments you made! Thank you for leaving this beautiful comment and a 5 star rating!!
Had these beautiful almonds given to me by Renee Bogart (a friend). She shared your info with me and zi love this recipe. Thank you for sharing!
I’m so happy to hear that, thank you for taking the time to leave such a nice comment and star rating! How sweet of her to share a gift that she made for you! I’m so glad you love this recipe! Merry Christmas!