These roasted Candied Hazelnuts are perfectly sweet with a spicy kick. They are an excellent addition to salads or desserts.
I’m not gonna lie. These candied hazelnuts were amazing. They were pretty easy to make too. I started with raw hazelnuts. Did you know that Oregon produces like 99% of the hazelnuts grown in the US? One of my proud “eat local” tidbits. I roasted them in the oven until they became fragrant and their skins started to peel off. After you rub away as much of the skins as you can, give them a good rinse, coat with powdered sugar and spices – and by spices I mean both the traditional cinnamon holiday variety as well as red hot cayenne pepper – and then you bake them some more to get them nice and sticky.
Just like crunchy always pairs well with soft, these sweet and spicy nuts are amaze-balls. The heat from the cayenne is subtle and you don’t taste it until you’re almost ready to throw another handful in your mouth.
So far I’ve used these nuts on top of eggnog cupcakes as well as a kale apple bacon salad – both recipes are freaking amazing.
My kids loved these candied hazelnuts to! I had to fight them off so that I had enough to photograph for this post.
Candied Hazelnuts
Ingredients
- 1 cup hazelnuts
- 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon Kosher salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350° F.
- Place hazelnuts in an oven safe dish and roast for 20 minutes. Transfer to a towel and rub away as many skins as you can.
- In a bowl, cover the hazelnuts with water. Transfer to a sieve and shake out the water.
- In another bowl, combine the confectioners' sugar, cayenne, cinnamon, and 1 teaspoon of salt.
- Add the hazelnuts and toss. Transfer to a sieve to shake off the excess coating.
- Arrange the hazelnuts on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the sugar is lightly caramelized and the hazelnuts are golden.
YUM! I gotta figure out where I can even buy hazelnuts because there are so many things I want to try with them! I gotta hit up Trader Joe’s one of these days…it’s right on my way to/from the gym!
Gasp. You’ve never been to Trader Joe’s, Ashley? It’s like my favorite place in the world. It will change your life! -Krissy
My daughter brought back as a gift from the German Christmas markets, candied almonds, flavored with….wait for it….
Bailey’s Irish Creme!!! I have searched many recipes for candied nuts, and I am thinking their recipe was cooked down first to maintain the rich flavor, before they tossed then baked them. They are heavenly! Creme deCoco would be wonderful too on desserts, if you can keep them around for that and not eat them.
I’m so sad some of you are having trouble finding hazelnuts. They are a major crop here in Oregon–in fact, there are over 800 farms producing these here, and Oregon is biggest hazelnut producer in the country! We need to get to marketing them better, apparently! This recipe for spicy hazelnuts is SO good–I use it to top my rice combo (brown, black, red, and wild) that is cooked in chicken broth, and it’s so popular with my family and friends. I use it also to top our favorite pear and goat cheese mixed green salad with vinaigrette. Or just munch on them by themselves! SO yummy.
Nuts.com is a great source for raw, already-skinned hazelnuts. I bought a bag to use to make caramelized nuts for munching and for chocolate bark, which is why I ended up at this page! I’ve used Nuts.com for many years for nuts, dried berries, toffee bits (Skor bits), malt ball centers, and other inclusions for chocolates, and the ingredients so far have always arrived very quickly and fresh.
Oops, more accurately, the skinned hazelnuts from Nuts.com are blanched, not raw (it would be hard to skin raw ones!).
Thank you for the recipe! I forgot it was supposed to be doing our tasting at work tomorrow, and our Italian Piedmontese hazelnuts are something I have stocked up in my pantry! I reduced the cayenne by half for those who are not really into a lot of heat, so I really hope this is a great tasting this afternoon!