sticky nougat

I adore nougat, never buy it for myself and after heavy hinting at Christmas and birthdays, I only ever get Callard & Bowser's nougat (because that's the one I love and it comes in lovely blue and white packaging) about once a year. But I digress.

To make my very own nougat I stuck to what flavours I like so I used toasted almonds and some dried cranberries. And I mistakingly departed from the recipe and put vanilla seeds into the sugar syrup mixture instead of using a whole vanilla pod which has to be fished out after the mixture boils. No matter, I loved the end taste result.


Here are the ingredients I used:

These are the stages:
1. toast whole almonds (not shown) in oven.

2. heat honey.

3. heat & boil sugar, vanilla pod, golden syrup, water.

4. add warm honey to boiled syrup mixture.
5. have egg whites, cream of tartar and sugar on high whisk and slowly pour hot syrup mixture onto whipping
    whites.
6. marvel at the volume of the mixture!

when done,
7. add warm almonds and cranberries.

8. spread mixture into tin.

9. cover with baking paper and flatten out.

10. cut before mixture goes cold.

but this is the best I could do. As you can see, the nougat had not set sufficiently to cut into clean squares and I put this down to the temperature and humidity of the kitchen ...

This is only a rental house and the heating/moisture in the house is awful. It is cold and damp.

So I will try the recipe again in my new house (yay!) and see if I can't make perfect nougat.

I absolutely loved this challenge and hope to try another flavour combo.

Thank you Rebecca of BakeNQuilt for hosting this challenge.

Blog-checking lines: The March 2014 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Rebecca of BakeNQuilt. She challenged us to learn to make classic nougat and to make it our own with our choice of flavors and add-ins.