1½ pounds sugar.
¾ pound glucose.
2 ounces butter.
½ tablespoonful vanilla.
¾ pound peanuts. (Raw.)
1 heaping teaspoonful soda.
⅔ pint water.
Put sugar, glucose and water on hot fire and stir until it commences
boiling, wash down sides of kettle, cover until it steams well,
remove cover, and put in thermometer and cook to 275, then take
out the thermometer and put in the peanuts and butter, and stir
constantly after you put the peanuts in. This of course will reduce
the temperature of the batch, but it will soon boil up, and must be
cooked until the peanuts are roasted, and the candy becomes a golden
brown color, which it does about the time the peanuts are roasted
sufficiently. Sometimes the peanuts will commence to pop, which
indicates that they are roasted about enough, but if they do not pop,
you can very easily tell when they are roasted sufficiently, as a great
many of them break open, and by lifting the paddle occasionally with
some of the peanuts on it, you can tell by their looks if they are
roasted or not. There is no exact degree to which this second cooking
must be done, but be careful and do not let your batch get too brown.
After making one or two batches you will have no trouble in cooking
it correctly. The proper peanuts to use in this candy are the small
unroasted Spanish peanuts that we mentioned before. Do not attempt to
put roasted peanuts in this candy in this manner but if you should use
the roasted ones, they must be stirred in after the candy is cooked, as
they would burn black if you put them in as we directed you in using
the raw ones.
This candy is intended only to be made with the unroasted peanuts as
directed, and if properly done, it is the finest peanut brittle made.
When the peanuts are roasted, set off the fire and stir the vanilla in
well. Have your soda dissolved in just a very little water, using only
enough to cover it. Immediately after stirring in the vanilla, pour in
the dissolved soda and stir through the batch thoroughly, which will
cause it to foam up considerably and get lighter in color. As soon as
you have it stirred enough so that the batch is thoroughly mixed and
foamy, pour on greased slab, and it will be necessary to =scrape= the
kettle out in making this candy.
Always have your slab warm before pouring this candy on it, as it is
cooked very high and will harden very quickly if your slab is cold,
which you do not want it to do. If you stand your slab by the stove
for a while, previous to making the candy, it will warm it enough.
After being on the slab a very few moments, take hold of it all the way
around the edge, lift it so as to free it from the slab, then catch
hold of one side with both hands, one hand at each end of the batch,
and quickly flop the whole batch right over, just the same as you would
turn a pancake. Now commence around the edge and stretch it, by pulling
it out as thin as possible, and you will find that the candy will
stretch out very easily and leave all the peanuts completely covered
with the candy.
Always work very rapidly in doing this, and also work around the edges
first, as that hardens more quickly than the center of the batch. If
your slab is not large enough to hold this candy after it is stretched
out, as soon as you stretch part of it, cut that off with a knife and
lay it on some smooth surface, so that the candy will be perfectly flat
when cool, as it looks better. By cutting it off as you stretch it, in
this manner, you will find that after you have worked around the edges,
your slab will probably be large enough to hold the remainder of the
batch after being stretched out. The thinner you stretch this the nicer
it will be, so try and do not leave any thick places in it, and you
will find you have the finest peanut candy you ever tasted, being as
brittle as glass, and it may be eaten as easily as a soda cracker.
In making this candy, you must have a kettle large enough to allow for
the foaming up, and a kettle holding two and one half gallons will
easily hold a batch just twice the size of this. You will find it is
very easy to flop the batch over, if you loosen it first as we directed
you. This is essentially a cold weather candy, as it keeps brittle
then, and is much better.