Spice up your Valentine's Day with pecans
February 8, 2007
By STEPHANIE FOSNIGHT Staff Writer from Evanston-Review.com

This Valentine's Day, let someone else bring the chocolate.
Instead, spice up the day of sweets by serving your own homemade candied pecans and dried fruit.
Chicago residents Margy Kaye and Katherine Montalto created this easy recipe for a treat that provides a somewhat different experience for the Valentine's Day palate. The crunchy nuts and smooth fruit are enhanced by a sweet and salty coating with just a hint of heat and cocoa.
Kaye is a lifelong candy lover who turned her toffee recipe, popular with friends and family, into a business when she opened "Confection Diva" a year ago. Now Kaye, who stirs up her toffee at Corner Cooks kitchen in Winnetka, sells Sweet Margy's Toffee at specialty shops throughout the area.

But Kaye isn't content to limit her cooking to toffee. She's constantly experimenting with new recipes for sweet treats.

"I play," she said. "I bake a lot."

Kaye enlisted Montalto, a culinary school graduate, to help her develop recipes for the company. They put the finishing touches on this spiced pecan recipe, which they've been experimenting with for awhile, so that Pioneer Press readers could have an unusual sweet to offer this Valentine's Day.

The hardest part was finding the right balance of ingredients so that they could all still be tasted in the final product.

"When all you taste is one ingredient and there are 60 ingredients in the recipe, you know something is wrong," Kaye said. The pair's biggest challenge was calibrating the chile powder to give just a bit of spice but not to overwhelm the nuts and fruit.

"Its got a nice finish," Montalto said. "It's not too offensive.

"Some of the versions we tried were too offensive," Kaye admitted. "There were some so powerfully hot you couldn't eat them."

Baking and candymaking is new to Montalto, who is trained as a savory chef, although she remembers one disastrous attempt at chocolate-making back when she started culinary school.

"I tried some chocolate truffles and I failed miserably," Montalto said. "It was probably not the best thing to start out with."

Now, however, she's gained confidence through trial and error sessions with Kaye. When it comes to making desserts, Kaye said it's important to be prepared for mistakes.

"Just keep trying," she said. "Don't consider it a failure if it doesn't turn out the way you want it to."

She also advocates adding new ingredients or making substitutions to the original recipe. For example, Kaye was surprised to discover, when she decided to add fruit to the nut mixture, just how many dried fruits were available, everything from blueberry to rhubarb.
The fruit addition only serves to add even more flavors and textures to the spiced pecans, Kaye said.

"You've got a little salt, you've got a little sugar, you've got a little crunch and all of those textures you want in food," she said. "All it's missing is chocolate."

SPICED CANDIED PECANS WITH FRUIT
For nuts:
1 C sugar
2 T salt
2 tsp. chile powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 T unsweetened cocoa
2 egg whites
1 1/2 lb pecans, roasted
For fruit:
1 1/2 C dried fruit, such as mango, pineapple, papaya, blueberries and rhubarb
1 egg white
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. chili powder

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Make pecans: Combine sugar, salt, chili powder, cinnamon and cocoa in a bowl.
In another bowl, beat two egg whites until frothy. Mix egg whites with pecans until pecans are completely coated. Drain any excess egg white from the pecans.

Add dry mix into pecan, a little at a time, stirring well with each addition. Mix by hand until pecans are completely coated.
Place an even layer of pecans on a baking sheet. Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. (Note: You will add the fruit during the last 20 minutes of baking time).

Make fruit: Cut fruit into bite-sized pieces.
Beat remaining egg white until frothy.

Completely coat dried fruit with egg whites, drain any excess. Add cinnamon and chili powder, stir until evenly coated.
Add fruit to the pecans in the last 20 minutes of baking.
Let candied nuts cool completely on baking sheet. Store in an airtight container.