This is the candy you see at many Tex Mex restaurants, offered as an alternative to sherbert as a desert. It's fairly easy to make, but there are a few pointers that keep the process from becoming a disaster in the kitchen. Once you know what you're doing, then you can announce the fact that you're making these before the fact. Until there is the familiarity, keep it a surprise. You don't want to disappoint people with a disaster.

Ingredients:

2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups fresh whole pecan halves

     Combine all ingredients in a large stainless pot and stir gently until all sugar is moist. Using a candy thermometer, cook over moderate heat to soft ball stage (238ƒF). Remove from heat and beat until mixture starts to thicken. Spoon onto waxed paper and allow to cool.

     Simple, right? Think again.
     1) When the mixture reaches 200ƒF, the moisture in the pecans errupts, thus the need for a considerably larger pot than the volume of the ingredients. Remove from heat quickly if the bubbling mixture threatens to overflow the pot. You do not want this mixture dripping onto the fire or electric heating coil. (Whew!) At the same time, don't allow the mixture to cool.
     2) After the stage where the boil off is done, the temperature seems to stay at the same temperature forever (200ƒ-220ƒ) as the chemical conversion of the sugar is absorbing virtually all the heat pumped into it. Do not allow this seemingly eternal stage to lull you to sleep. Once the chemical conversion is done, the temperature rises like a sky rocket. It is very easy to have the temperature rise above hard ball stage if a sharp eye is not kept on the thermometer.
     3) The boiling mix changes color, darkening considerably and changing texture to a thicker consistency, just as it reaches soft ball stage. The moment the thermometer reaches 238ƒF, remove the mix from the heat and begin whipping until the very first moment it starts to thicken. When it does, you're in a race to get it all spooned out onto the wax paper before the mixture hardens too much to drop. If you don't hurry, you wind up with one huge praline glued to the bottom of the pot.

     Other than this, it's an easy recipe. Once you've become familiar with the process, it's not difficult to understand the warning signs that prompt you to take the necessary actions. After a few runs, it's not a difficult recipe to make.
     Run the process a few times before attempting to make multiple batches. The spooning onto wax paper is especially critical here, and it might not hurt to have two chefs working both sides of the pot with multiple batches. Just be careful to run an alternating sequence so that you don't have two spoons in the pot at the same time. 238ƒF is plenty hot to scald flesh. Be careful.


     When done, the reside in the pot disolves easily with hot water. Fill it with straight hot tap water and allow to sit, or fill the pot with water and set back on the stove to boil to hurry the process. Don't mar or dent the pot by trying to scrape it out, as it sticks quite stubbornly once it has cooled. Hot water does the job nicely and cleanly.