New Orleans Style Pecan Praline Recipe with Splenda #SweetSwaps (2024)

FAQs

What causes pralines not to harden? ›

The simple answer is that there is too much moisture in your candy. One or more factors could be contributing to this problem. In hard candy making, it is important to cook all the water out of the sugar/corn syrup/water mixture.

What is the difference between candied pecans and pralines? Candied pecans are pecans coated in egg whites, sugar, and spices, then baked until crispy. Pralines are a drop-candy with a caramel-like base and crunchy pecans mixed in.

A basic praline recipe calls for brown sugar, granulated sugar, cream, butter, and pecans. Naturally, many other variations have cropped up, including pralines flavored with shredded coconut, rum, vanilla, chocolate, and peanut butter.

Avoid The Humidity

Plan to make your pralines on a cool, dry day. If it's humid or rainy, as it was the first time I made pralines, the candy might end up with a more sugary, grainy texture.

But if your pralines are still gooey after 30-40 minutes, you may have to scrape them back into the pan and heat them again. Add a tablespoon of milk, melt the sugar, and as before, stir constantly while you bring them to a boil. When the mixture begins to thicken, begin dipping them out again and cross your fingers!

A little crystallization in pralines is inevitable but adding a bit of corn syrup can help keep crystals from forming. In this recipe I also butter the sides of the pot and only stir before the sugar comes to a boil.

Adding a pecan praline treat to your mid-morning brunch will do wonders for your taste buds and your mood. After all, pecan pralines are considered one of the healthier options to indulge in. Pecans are considered a superfood, packed full of vitamins and minerals most people aren't even aware of.

Praline may have originally been inspired in France by the cook of Marshal du Plessis-Praslin (1602–1675), with the word praline deriving from the name Praslin. Early pralines were whole almonds individually coated in caramelized sugar, as opposed to dark nougat, where a sheet of caramelized sugar covers many nuts.

Why are my candied pecans soft and sticky? If your pecans are soft, it's most likely because they weren't baked long enough and are still retaining moisture. The sugar needs to bake long enough to caramelize and form a brittle coating on the nuts.

In Louisiana, especially New Orleans, the name praline applies to candies made with pecans in a coating of brown sugar sold by Creole women known as pralinières. Even before the Civil War and Emancipation, pralines were an early entrepreneurial vehicle for free women of color in New Orleans.

What dessert is famous in New Orleans? ›

Pecan praline, on the other hand, is really a sugary confection that is a candy in and of itself. The sugary sweetness is pulled to the forefront in pralines, while butter pecan celebrates the balance of sweet and roast-y toast-y.

Why are there white spots on my pralines? The white spots are a natural process called crystallization. Because our pralines are made with NO preservatives, the white spots occur over time as the cooked sugar returns to its original crystal form.

Just make sure you buy your nuts raw and not already roasted. The main reason for that is that we will cook the nuts in a pan for 10-15 min. If you do this with roasted nuts, they will end up being over-roasted and your praline will taste very bitter.

Pralines should be cooked to 236°F (soft ball stage) so that it is still pliable when it cools and so it maintains the smooth sandy texture typical of pralines. This is impossible to determine without a thermometer, and if you overheat the sugar, you are guaranteed to make pralines that are too firm and grainy.

Since the problem is mostly that the sugar in the pralines gets hard and crystallized, you might try softening them the way you'd soften hard brown sugar. Place a terracotta sugar saver in the container or something else that's slightly damp, like a few slices of apple or a slice of fresh bread.

Sometimes, as syrup boils, sugar starts to form back into crystals, which turn hard and cloudy. Crystallisation can be caused by stirring, or a grain of something other than sugar getting into the pan, or often just bad luck.

235° F–240° F

At this temperature, sugar syrup dropped into cold water will form a soft, flexible ball. If you remove the ball from water, it will flatten like a pancake after a few moments in your hand. Fudge , pralines, and fondant are made by cooking ingredients to the soft-ball stage.