Honey Peanut Brittle Recipe

Watch my best peanut brittle web story here.

POC recipes are so clearly written and include such helpful tips – I’m so glad to have found you. Thank you, Jenni!

Reader Teresa

Why This Recipe Works

Peanut brittle is an easy candy to make, and this recipe is no exception.

It’s also easy to vary. Add extracts at the end of cooking, add spices, or change up your nuts. You can even make a mixed nut brittle.

This recipe makes the perfect amount to spread out onto a half-sheet pan.

The candy weighs in at around 2 pounds, which is a generous amount.

Even so, you can double the recipe if you’d like with no issues as long as you have a large enough pan.

The balance of honey and sugar is really nice, also. You can definitely taste the honey flavor, but it’s overly assertive.

There’s also enough salt in it to bring out the nuttiness and cut a bit of the sweetness.

How to Make Honey Nut Brittle

Ingredients and Substitutions

See the ingredient descriptions below the image. I will also add substitutions where applicable.

• Sugar: This provides the sweetness and the crunch when you cook it to the correct temperature. You could substitute half the sugar with brown sugar if you’d like.
• Honey: A lighter-flavored honey works better, especially if you don’t like an aggressive honey flavor. You can also use maple syrup for a different flavor. Or just use more corn syrup for a more neutral peanut flavor.
• Corn Syrup: Adds a bit of sweetness but is primarily there to help avoid crystallization since you have to stir nuts into the candy. Without it, you could end up with a sandy mess. Which will still be tasty. It just won’t be peanut brittle.
• (Water): I add about 1/4 cup of water at the beginning of cooking to moisten the sugar and make it melt more evenly. Consider adding a little extra flavor here by substituting some hard cider or regular apple cider
• Peanuts: You can use any peanuts you like here. I used big old fancy Virginia peanuts because they look pretty in the brittle. Feel free to use your favorite nuts and/or seeds or a mixture. The recipe calls for 9 oz by weight, but the recipe should be able to accomodate up to 11-12 oz, by weight.
• Salt: Tempers the sweetness and brings out the nutty flavor.
• Butter: Not strictly necessary, but it does help to provide a little bit of a creamy bite as well as some buttery flavor.
• Baking soda: The baking soda reacts in the super hot sugar, foaming up like mad. This is what lightens the candy and keeps it from being too hard and crunchy. Those tiny little air bubbles make a big difference. Do NOT subsitute baking powder.

Procedure

This is a pretty straightforward recipe. Here’s what you’ll do:

1) Mix sugar, honey, corn syrup, salt, and water together and stir to get the sugar wet.

2) Bring candy up to a boil and cook until it reaches 265F.

3) Stir in peanuts and butter.

4) Cook to 310F. Off the heat, stir in the baking soda thoroughly.

5) Pour candy out onto a Silpat-lined half-sheet pan and spread out with an offset spatula.

6) Once the candy cools completely, break it up into pieces.

Note: allow at least a couple of hours for your honey peanut brittle to cool completely before breaking into pieces.

Equipment You Will Need

The most important thing you can own to make candy is an accurate thermometer. I know lots of people like one that clips to the side of the pan, but those aren’t always completely accurate, especially if you’re not stirring the candy.

With a good instant-read thermometer, you can sort of “stir” the candy with the probe to get a better idea of the temperature of the contents of your pan.

And speaking of pans, for safety, it’s best to always use a pan that is much larger than you think you need.

This recipe works well in a 3-quart saucepan. To make a double recipe, use at least a 5-quart Dutch oven.

Silicone baking mats can be expensive and are not always the best item for the job, but there really is not substitute when it comes to candy making.

You can purchase an OG Silpat, but there are many other brands out there as well at other price points.

Variations

I used 1/2 cup hard cider, maple syrup in place of honey, and crumbled bacon to make this hard cider maple bacon peanut brittle. The rest of the ingredients and amounts are the same.

Stir some crisp, crumbled bacon and banana chips in with the peanuts. Add a little banana extract along with the baking soda and make an Elvis-style peanut brittle!

Spice things up by adding pepper flake or some ground chipotle to the mix. I’d add pepper flakes when I add the peanuts but wait to add the ground spice until the end with the baking soda.

Add some homemade or store-bought granola–granola brittle sounds like a great plan!

Use maple syrup in place of the honey and add pecans as your nut of choice for a delicious maple pecan brittle.

Pro Tips for Making This (or Any) Candy

Sugar can be very temperamental, so always make sugar on clear, high-pressure days. Humidity is the candy maker’s nemesis.

When spreading candy onto the baking sheet, spray your offset spatula with some pan spray to keep the candy from sticking. This will not affect how the candy sets up.

Remember that candy is very, very hot. Since you boil all the water out of it, the temperature is free to soar above the boiling point of water.

So, if some candy splashes onto the counter, just leave it until it cools.

The best way I’ve found to clean a pot after making hard candy is to fill it with water and heat it on the stove to melt any candy adhering to the sides of the pan. Then, just pour it out.

Peanut Brittle Q & A

Serving Suggestions

1. Spread it thinly to cool, and you can break it up into shards and use it for garnish.
2. Spread it more thickly, you can grate it and make “brittle dust.” This is nice because it sort of melts in your mouth.
3. Layer it with custard or use as a crunchy component in an English trifle.
4. Bake pieces into brownies.
5. Fold it into French vanilla ice cream. The candy will soften and turn into a caramel sauce surrounding the nuts. Like a peanut version of pralines and cream.
6. Fold wee pieces into mousse or ganache and use it as cake filling/frosting.

More Peanutty Candy to Love

If you’re a fan of peanuts in candy, you will probably want to try my peanut butter fudge recipe. It, too, has honey in it, because I love the combination.

For a recipe with only two ingredients, give this candied peanut recipe a try. I could eat them by the handful!

And here is a fun Mexican peanut candy recipe that also only requires two ingredients. And bonus: no cooking to make this Mexican mazapan candy!

Questions?

If you have questions about this post or recipe, don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can leave a comment on the post and I will get back to you within about 24 hours.

If your question is more urgent, please shoot me an email, and I will respond within 4 hours, unless I’m asleep.

A Note About Measurements

NOTE: Most of my recipes are written by weight and not volume, even the liquids.

Even though I try to provide you with volume measurements as well, I encourage you to buy a kitchen scale for ease of measuring, accuracy, and consistency.

This is the scale I use, love, and recommend. If you’re unsure, please read my post about how to use a food scale.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. Enjoy the honey peanut brittle, and have a lovely day.