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. 
This is the perfect recipe for all of the leftover ingredients I have! Hubby made me buy a 3-pound bag of cranberries because he loves them, but you only use 12 ounces for cranberry sauce so I’ve got about 2 pounds of cranberries left to use, plus lots of pumpkins and pecans. This is definitely being made this weekend!
Oh man. That does sound good. And I know it must be if you’re repeating it because I am the same way. I’m going to make a cranberry maple pecan cake on Friday… but this is really tempting too.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Oh, man! If I only had more time for Thanksgiving dessert table – this is certainly one I would try.
Oooh this cake looks so ooey gooey and delicious! I wish there weren’t already so many desserts coming to my Thanksgiving table because I’d totally make this!
Sues
This looks super delicious and your photos look great too! Happy Thanksgiving to you and hubby!
ooooh, my, i must try this 🙂 happy thanksgiving!!
What a fabulous recipe! All the flavors sound delicious to me.
This looks amazing! It looks so moisty yum, I should try to make this sometime, Love your blog! this is my first comment for you so I thought I’d show some appreciation for your blog, because I’ve been drooling over all your recipes for a while
Shandra-http://shandrita.tumblr.com/
Your photos are beautiful! The pictures I took of the actual cake didn’t look to appealing, the photos I took of the bite sized cake bites looked pretty though lol
Good job!!
What a great recipe! You totally had me at caramel/pecan/cranberry topping.
Just finally made this cake and it is astoundingly good! Truly the best dessert I’ve had in…oh, a very long time. Thank you for your post!
I tried to be good, I really did! This cake was so delicious, I not only had seconds, I had a piece for breakfast the next day and for a snack later that day. This one goes on my Christmas menu!
beantownbaker — December 1st, 2013 @ 6:52 pm
I doubled the recipe this time and you’ll remember the middle didn’t quite bake through. It also spilled over a bit, so next time, I’ll put a pan under the cake in the oven.