Easy Southern praline candies that require no baking (2024)

FAQs

What causes pralines not to harden? ›

If the sugar mixture is not cooked to the proper temperature (the hard-crack stage 300-310° F {149-154° C.} or if you are working in a kitchen with high humidity, chances are your candy is retaining too much moisture.

Pralines have a lot in common with nut brittle, with the difference being mostly in the addition of cream and the cooking temperature––the sugary syrup used to coat pralines is heated to a soft-ball consistency, a lower temperature than the hard-crack stage of peanut brittle.

The basic praline recipe includes locally-sourced pecan halves, creamy butter, sugar, and cream.

New Orleans Praline Recipe

Most recipes include a few traditional base ingredients: sugar, milk, butter and pecans. The New Orleans School of Cooking teaches guests to make a traditional praline. Whether in the French Quarter or in the comfort of your own home, you can use this recipe to make a batch of your own.

Remove the pot from the stove and place on your countertop. Stir vigorously till the praline mixture looses it's shiny quality and starts to thicken up (for me this takes 2-3 minutes). Once that happens spoon the mixture onto a silpat mat or parchment paper in small piles.

Avoid The Humidity

Plan to make your pralines on a cool, dry day. If it's humid or rainy, as it was the first time I made pralines, the candy might end up with a more sugary, grainy texture. While delicious, my first batch never did fully harden.

Just make sure you buy your nuts raw and not already roasted. The main reason for that is that we will cook the nuts in a pan for 10-15 min. If you do this with roasted nuts, they will end up being over-roasted and your praline will taste very bitter.

Compared to butter pecan ice cream, praline ice cream is smoother in texture, owing to the fact that the nuts have already been transformed into pralines. Butter pecan ice cream keeps the actual pecan nuts intact, resulting in a crunchier texture.

Other terms for pralines include pecan pralines, pecan candy, plarines and pecan patties, to name a few. Modern day New Orleans pecan pralines are not very different than the ones made one hundred years ago.

praline, in French confectionery, a cooked mixture of sugar, nuts, and vanilla, often ground to a paste for use as a pastry or candy filling, analogous to marzipan; also, a sugar-coated almond or other nutmeat.

What ice cream brand makes pralines and cream? ›

Pralines 'N Cream | Baskin-Robbins® At Home.

French settlers brought the recipe to Louisiana, where both sugar cane and pecan trees were plentiful. In 19th century New Orleans, people began substituting pecans for almonds, added cream to thicken the confection, and thus created what became known throughout the American South as the praline.

In Louisiana, especially New Orleans, the name praline applies to candies made with pecans in a coating of brown sugar sold by Creole women known as pralinières. Even before the Civil War and Emancipation, pralines were an early entrepreneurial vehicle for free women of color in New Orleans.

The white spots are a natural process called crystallization. Because our pralines are made with NO preservatives, the white spots occur over time as the cooked sugar returns to its original crystal form. The process begins as soon as the candy leaves the pot, and does not affect flavor.

Although the earliest pralines have been around for centuries, today, there are three main different types that have developed through the ages: the French praline, the American praline, and the Belgian praline.

Why Won't My Pralines Set Up? If you find that your pralines are not setting up, it may be that the mixture either did not reach the correct temperature or was not mixed long enough. You want your mixture to reach 236°F, also known as the soft ball stage.

A little crystallization in pralines is inevitable but adding a bit of corn syrup can help keep crystals from forming. In this recipe I also butter the sides of the pot and only stir before the sugar comes to a boil. After the candy reaches soft-ball stage, it is left to cool for 10 minutes without agitation.

Traditional Southern recipes say never make these on a rainy day! Humidity and moisture can affect the finished texture of the candies.

Always use a heavy bottomed pot to make the pralines which will disperse heat evenly. Uneven heat distribution or fiddling too much with the temperature of the sugar can also lead to crystallization.