jaunthie | Cooking jones

Bad enough that I have a gardening habit, and get into gardening frenzies and withdrawal and so on. I also like to cook. I tend to do it a lot (part of daily life, y'know), but every so often I fall prey to the urge to try something new, something different, something out of the normal routine.

I've been craving almonds recently, and I love cinnamon, so I decided to try my hand at coming up with a reasonable recipe that combined both. This is super-easy and reasonably healthy as long as you don't pork out on them.

4 cups raw almonds
1 egg white
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar (or unrefined sugar, or whatever - just make sure it's a fine grind)
1 heaping teaspoon of cinnamon
1 pinch of salt (1/4 tsp if you must measure)

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F and line a jelly-roll pan with parchment paper. Place almonds in a large bowl; set aside. In a small bowl, combine the sugars, cinnamon, and salt until nicely mixed together. In another small bowl, whisk the vanilla and egg white together until foamy but not stiff. (You're aiming for a dry foam stage, more or less.) Spoon foam over almonds in batches and mix to coat nuts thoroughly. When egg white mix is thoroughly integrated and coating all the nuts, sprinkle on cinnamon-sugar mix in batches and toss/stir to thoroughly coat nuts. When all the sugar mix is applied, pour out the nuts onto the parchment-lined jelly roll pan and spread out evenly. Roast in the oven an hour to an hour and 20 minutes, stirring nuts every 20 minutes or so. Nuts are done when coating is dry and the nuts are golden-brown. Let cool thoroughly in the pan, and then bag and store in an airtight container. Makes about 21-22 servings.

I expect this would work just as well with other nuts, too. It's a very easy recipe to do, and most of it (the roasting) can be done while multitasking other cooking, or watching tv, or cleaning, or reading, or whatever.