Recipe | Winter-spiced Nuts

I needed a recipe for Mother's Day which was vegan and fairly simple. I found this recipe for some 'Party Nuts' over at Food Coma (you can now find Emma at A Beautiful Mess, my favourite little virtual place in the world right now) and they fit the bill perfectly. I used sunflower spread instead of butter and plenty of sugar and cinnamon - delish!

Winter-spiced Nuts

Nuts - I went for roughly a cup each of Almonds, Pecans and Walnuts

(Roughly) 4 tablespoons melted sunflower spread (can use butter)

Brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Sprinkle of ground nutmeg

Pinch of salt

1. Toast nuts in a dry pan, making sure to keep them moving to prevent them from burning.

This should be done over a medium heat for about 5 mins. I started on the lowest heat and it took for fricking ever. Thank goodness I'd decided to use walnut pieces as the pecans and almonds were pretty difficult to work out if they were toasting or not!

2. Melt sunflower spread (/butter).

3. Mix brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. I had used a full mini tupperware of each of the nuts, and used about 1/2 this tub of sugar.

4. When toasted, take nuts off heat and add melted sunflower spread. Be careful! I forgot the pan had JUST BEEN TOUCHING FIRE and the butter bubbled and spat a LOT. Stir thoroughly when it's calmed down.

5. Add sugar/cinnamon/nutmeg mixture, making sure to mix well.

6. Sprinkle a tiny amount of salt (not entirely necessary if you don't want to).

I found this little glass jar in a cookery shop nearby and it's perfect for storing these little nuts, and to give away as a present!

And there were even a few nuts left over which couldn't fit in the jar... Oh no...

These are SUPER yummy. I put a lot of cinnamon in my recipe so they are really festive and tasty. The only thing stopping me calling these Festive Nuts was that I didn't want to only be able to eat them in during the festive period!