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Orange Walnuts
This recipe came to me via a dear friend, Elsie Isensee Hill, who had gotten it from the Evangel College Auxiliary Cookbook (1967). It was a recipe from Mrs. Siegfried Enke, who had been my college P.E. teacher. Small world!
These make a delicious addition to a food buffet, a holiday party, wedding, etc. Several Christmases, I have made these for gifts, putting them in appropriate containers. I always get raves and requests for the recipe.
Ingredients:
- ½ cups granulated sugar
- ½ cup orange juice
- Dash of salt
- cups of English walnut halves
Directions:
- Boil the sugar, orange juice and salt together in a heavy 2-qt. pan. Boil until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage. (On my electric stove, from the time the mixture erupts into bubbles, it is about 3 minutes.)
- Immediately remove the mixture from the heat and place on a heat-resistant surface. Immediately add the 3 cups of walnut halves and stir until the mixture looks cloudy but not overly sugary. When it begins to sugar, turn out onto waxed paper. Using another piece of waxed paper, quickly spread the walnuts out to cool and harden. Break up whatever clumps you can, but you can still break these apart even when they are cool.
- NOTE: This mixture is VERY hot. Handle carefully to avoid burning yourself.
- Store in an air-tight container.
That’ s the basic recipe. Here are some hints to make it work!
- Have all your preparations done BEFORE starting to boil the mixture.
- Spread the waxed paper out onto a level surface.
- Tear off a small piece of waxed paper to have ready for spreading.
- Measure 3 cups of walnuts into a bowl.
- Set your timer for 3 minutes, ready to start it as soon as the mixture comes to a boil.
- Combine the sugar, salt and orange juice in the pan.
- Have a small dish of ice water to test for the soft ball stage.
- From the time you start cooking the mixture, you MUST stay right there. No multi-tasking (hard for me!).
- Once you have made these a few times, you will get used to what the mixture looks like. As it begins boiling, it will bubble up quite high (reason for a large pan). It will then start cooking down. When the mixture begins to look golden, the mixture is close to ready. You will have to determine how fast your stove cooks.
- I cannot emphasize enough that this process requires CONSTANT attention and QUICK work once you have added the walnuts. When you start mixing the walnuts in, you need to do this QUICKLY as the mixture will start to harden, and it will be impossible to get the walnuts out of the pan.
- You will probably have extra of the crystallized mixture left on the waxed paper. I scoop that up and store it in a small storage container. It is wonderful on cereal or ice cream.
Enjoy!
Copyright © 2008-2015 Shirley Shedd
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