un-brittle

Rather than make my usual holiday fare, I decided to take a stab at making brittle this year. I saw a recipe for walnut brittle in Cooking Light that looked intriguing. Plus, I remembered my former H.S. bio teacher talking about making brittle and how it was an annual tradition for his family and how it was a highly coveted item. It also seemed far less time-consuming than baking cookies and making rum balls.

The only problem with the recipe was that it calls for a cup of corn syrup, and in addition to my goldilocks method of baking, I also employ the "one percent" doctrine when it comes to potential problem ingredients, which is not to be confused with Cheney's one percent doctrine: if there is a one-percent possibility that I might want a person who has an allergy to a particular ingredient to try my finished product, and there is an easy viable substitute to problematic ingredient, then I use the substitute.

I have one friend who is allergic to corn. That coupled with my own weird conceptions of a hierarchy of the virtues of different sweeteners (Brown sugar>regular sugar> corn syrup>HFCS), I was happy to substitute another sweetener for corn syrup.

The problem was in the science. It turns out that corn syrup has a useful purpose in baking. The longer chains of glucose molecules present in corn syrup disrupt the motion of the molecules thereby slowing down the crystallization process. Corn syrup, according to Harold McGee's wonderful On Food and Cooking, is also slightly acidic, so when you add baking soda (NaH₂CO₃) at the end, you get a nice neutralizing reaction that produces carbon dioxide bubbles and gives brittle that characteristic hollow bubbled consistency. The alkaline properties of baking soda also make it useful for speeding up the browning process.

Is it possible to make brittle with just sugar? I posted this query on my favorite food board and promptly got answers. Yes, it was, with careful temperature monitoring and a few modifications.

Thus I tried the all-sugar method with thermometer in hand: brittle batch #1 was toasted hazelnut brittle. The first thing I discovered was that my thermometer is not a candy thermometer, and therefore, doesn't register temperatures nearly high enough to be useful.

So long for meticulous temperature measuring. I was on my own now. So I dumped the sugar and water into a pan and waited.

At some point, the sugar began to look murky. The crystallization had begun. Being the novice candy-maker that I am, I then started stirring with a metal spoon in the hopes of retarding this process, but it kept getting worse. It didn't have the characteristic light-browned hue of brittle yet, but since it was on the brink of crystalizing, I poured in the butter, nuts, cream of tartar and then spread it out on a pan.

Batch #1 was a disaster, but I was loathe to waste a whole thing of hazelnuts. Thus once it cooled and hardened and looked like an opaque whitish mess, I stuck it in the oven, which didn't exactly turn it into brittle, but helped salvage my product. Instead of the characteristic opaque hue of brittle, "brittle" #1 was translucent, but with the requisite browned hues.

I posted more queries on the food board, read up on the science of crystallization and why you absolutely do not want to stir the sugar (the agitation increases the bumping motion of the sugar molecules and helps the crystallization process.) and if you must, then why you absolutely do not want to use a metal spoon (the lowered temperatures caused by the metal spoon form pockets of super-saturated sugar areas, thereby potentially initiating a crystallization process.) to do the stirring that you are not supposed to do in the first place.

Thus, with brittle #2 (walnut brittle), I vowed not to stir. But again, despite my diligent non-stirring, the crystals started to form again. At one point, the entire pot was one white opaque mass.

However, this time, instead of stopping, I waited. And waited.

Eventually, the crystals melted and the sugar became brown and liquidy again. The consistency of brittle #2 turned out to be the same as #1. So some kind of carmelized sugar glass candy with nuts, but a far cry from brittle.

Still, it was edible, so I decided to give it to people anyway and told them it was "not brittle".

I think next year, I will stick with my usual holiday fare and give people rum balls.