The week before Christmas for me is normally reserved for an all-out, non-stop, sugar-coma-inducing baking marathon. My kitchen is covered with flour. Every available Tupperware container is packed with goodies. The amount of butter I go through in a week is obscene, frankly.
I’m a cookie girl. If you look at my Christmas Freak Pinterest board, you’ll find about 3000 recipes for every Christmas cookie imaginable. But occasionally, I venture into the realm of candy, though it’s usually just to create various versions of fudge. This year, however, I found a recipe for divinity and was suddenly obsessed with recreating it.
I’m so glad I did. This is as easy as fudge and it tastes like heaven-thus the name! I made two batches-one with pecans and one with walnuts. I toasted the nuts beforehand and they were equally delicious. Also the original recipe did not call for vanilla-I added it to give the candy that warm, Christmas taste.
This recipe comes from The International Jewish Cook Book, published in 1919.
Ingredients
2 cups of granulated sugar
1/2 cup of white corn syrup
1/2 cup water
2 egg whites, beaten into stiff peaks
1 cup toasted and chopped pecans or walnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
To toast your nuts, set your oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spread your nuts out in a single layer. Bake for approximately ten minutes, cool, and chop. (This makes your house smell fantastic!)
Separate your eggs and begin beating the whites into stiff peaks. (If you’re able to plan ahead, let the white sit on the counter for half an hour-they’ll whip up faster!)
Boil the sugar, syrup and water over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until a candy thermometer reaches 260 degrees. If you don’t have a candy thermometer (I don’t!) then boil it until a small amount of the mixture dropped into cold water turns brittle or forms a thread. For me, this took about 12 minutes.
When you reach that point with the sugar mixture, pour it very slowly over the beaten egg whites into your stand mixer while the mixer is running. You don’t want to add the mixture too quickly and end up cooking your egg whites. Add the nuts and vanilla and beat until the mixture is looses its shine and becomes very creamy-this took about 8 minutes for me.
You can put it in a buttered pan and cut it into squares later or drop it by the spoonful onto parchment paper to set-this only took about 10 minutes total for my batch.
Enjoy!