Brittle and baking soda

brittle served and ready to enjoy

Brittle has been around a long long time.  It's made all over the world, and everywhere it's made different kinds of nuts and seeds might be added to it as dictated by history and tradition, by prevailing preferences for certain nuts in different places, and other regional factors.

Brittle is quite simply a hard sugar candy with embedded nuts.  That's it.  Nothing more complicated than that.

brittle hot out of the saucepan ready to cool

A sugar solution (sugar, corn syrup, and water) is cooked to 300 F or a bit more.  If it's not cooked long enough to reach that temperature, the brittle won't be a brittle at all.  After reaching that temperature, nuts are added, sometimes butter, and flavorings, and some salt.  But my favorite part of making this is the addition of the last ingredient at the very end:  baking soda.

brittle cooled and ready to be broken - doesn't look much different from hot

The saucepan has this very hot mixture of all the nuts, sugars and other ingredients, and to this is added the baking soda.  As soon as it is stirred in, the baking soda (which is alkaline) reacts with the acids in the sugar solution (which result from chemical changes in the sugars as they cook), and lots of carbon dioxide is released.  The mixture foams up quite a bit and the color is changed a bit as well.  Within seconds after stirring in the baking soda, the mixture is ready to be poured from the saucepan onto a baking tray where it can be spread out to a reasonable thickness. 

brittle pieces, brittle crumbs, brittle dust

This baking soda reaction helps give the candy a more porous texture than would otherwise result.  The addition of a small amount of butter also helps with the texture, richness and flavor.  (Corn syrup in the initial sugar solution also has an affect, but that's a more involved chemistry lesson for another day using such terms as fructose, glucose, and inversion.)  All of this means that you have a brittle which is much more enjoyable to eat than simply a rock hard shard of sugar candy.

The brittle has to cool for quite a while.  I always let mine sit for a few hours before breaking it up, and I always break it up with a knife.  No hands, no mallet.  I get out a bit strong knife and slowly break it into bite size pieces, eliminating sharp points so it's nicer for everyone.  The candy has enough porousness that it breaks quite easily under the knife.  (And it also breaks quite easily in your mouth, without requiring undue amounts of pressure that threaten to break other things as well.)  Using a knife in this way gives me lots of little crumbs and brittle dust, more than I would get from using a mallet.  I love to use the brittle dust to sprinkle on ice creams, or as an embellishment to cream toppings on pies and puddings, and once I even sprinkled some on cinnamon toast and it was pretty darn good.

brittle dust to save for other desserts and a whole bowl of pieces for guests to enjoy

Try making it sometime.  It doesn't take that long.  And the baking soda part is pure fun. Read up on the chemistry of the whole process and you can easily become sufficiently knowledgeable to talk about it at social gatherings.