Candied Vanilla Pecans
You know how they say you should bake fresh cookies before an open house so that your house will smell more enticing to potential buyers? I’m going to go ahead and claim that instead of cookies, you should make these Candied Vanilla Pecans. My house smelled AMAZING last night when I made these. They bake for an entire hour, so the wonderful sweet vanilla scent lingers for a good while. I honestly didn’t want to go to bed and miss any of the awesome smelling air in our place.
The pecans were still warm when I went to bed so I didn’t get to try them until today. Let me tell you, they taste better than they smell. This recipe is amazing. If you’re looking for a last minute holiday gift to make or even a snack to take to a holiday potluck, definitely give this simple recipe a shot.
One Year Ago: Toffee Pecan Cookies
Two Years Ago: Pecan Pie
Four Years Ago: Squash Bisque
Candied Vanilla Pecans
Ingredients:
4 cups (~1 lb) pecans
1 egg white
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp water
1 tsp cinnamon
1 heaping tsp sea salt
3/4 cup vanilla sugar (If you don’t have vanilla sugar, substitute regular sugar and increase the vanilla extract to 1 tsp)
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 250 and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
Mix together the sugar, cinnamon and sea salt.
In a large bowl combine the egg white, vanilla and water. Beat the egg until it’s light and frothy. Stir in the pecans and mix well. Pour in the sugar mixture and stir until all the pecans are coated.
Dump the mixture onto your large baking sheet and spread the nuts out evenly.
Bake about 1 hour making sure to stir every 15 minutes and break up any large clumps.
Cool completely on the baking sheet on a wire cooling rack.
Recipe from Miss Lemonie
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
Just beautiful! Buttercream sings to my soul. Or possibly my thighs, but either way, yum!
I love a good vanilla frosting. What I find odd though, there is only 2.5 cups powdered sugar along with 2.5 sticks of butter. Wow, that is not much powdered sugar. I would be adding like 5 or 6 cups sugar with enough milk or cream to moisten. But hey, you said this was a terrific icing and it looks damn good so I shall try it. Thanks for the white cake recipe too! Good combo: white cake/white icing.
Frosting is the best part of cupcakes and cake so I definitely think it deserves its own post 🙂
This frosting looks yummy. I don’t know how I miss this.
I agree Heidi, it does seem like a small amount of sugar to butter. But it’s quite tasty. Let me know if you try it.
Thanks for all of the go-to recipes! I can’t tell you how many variations of these things I must have bookmarked because I don’t know which is best, but now I can delete all of those! These allow those of us who aren’t really good at testing things to know that we have a good homemade basic. So much less stress!