Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Sweet and Savory Snack

Ellie Krieger has a recipe for Spiced Mixed Nuts that is crazy good. Someone please take these away from me. Lock them up somewhere safe. I'm serious. You should only make the following recipe when you're expecting a lot of people over. Otherwise, I can't be held liable for what might happen in your house.

1/2 cup raw pecans
1/2 cup raw almonds
1/3 cup shelled raw pistachios
1/3 cup raw cashews
1/3 cup shelled raw pumpkin seeds
1 T pure maple syrup
1/2 t curry powder
1/8 t cayenne pepper
1/2 t dried rosemary
1/4 t salt
Cooking spray

Preheat the oven to 325 F. Combine the nuts and seeds in a medium bowl. Add the maple syrup, spices, rosemary, and salt and toss to combine.

Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray, then transfer the coated nuts to the sheet and spread evenly in a single layer. Bake, stirring once, until the nuts are fragrant and lightly toasted. Approx. 15-20 min. Remove from the oven and let cool.

  • After the mixture cooled, I added dried cherries, cranberries and thin pretzels called "pretzel crisps" to the batch. Last night I ran out to my class (yes, I'm quite the scholar. check out my class at http://www.dcimprov.com/college/learnimprov.htm), with a bag of this for dinner. I normally would never skip a meal, but I lost track of time. I opened my ziploc bag of these during our break and many heads whipped around to see where the aroma was coming from....

1 comment:

Vicci said...

WOW!
I stumbled across your website recently and copied this recipe. My husband is a fanatic about this sort of thing (and I can't really resist, either) so I thought I'd make a batch for him for Valentine's Day.

Unfortunately I have a broken ankle/ foot and I had to sneak around for two days, hobbling on crutches while he wasn't around to ask what I was doing (he works from home, so this is surprisingly difficult). I had the ingredients all ready and he left for a few hours yesterday afternoon so I thought it would be my chance. It took five minutes, tops, to put together the recipe and get it into the oven.

Unfortunately, I neglected to anticipate how wonderful these smell while baking! I turned on the stove fan as soon as I started to drool from the aroma coming from the kitchen, but it was too late.

The house was permeated. I removed the nuts and, with great difficulty, took them to the enclosed back porch to cool. I burnt candles, kept the fan on, but he came in an hour and a half later, his eyes lit up, and he asked "Wow! What did you make???".

He has been so good during my convalesence that I decided to just give him the nuts and do something else for Valentine's Day. We added a cup of mixed dried cranberries, blueberries, and cherries. He was in heaven, as was I-- these are EXCELLENT!!!

Sorry for the lengthy post. ;) I just thought I'd explain the situation and how great this snack mix is. Thanks so much for posting it!

Love your blog!!!

~Vicci