Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts - FFWD

For my first December FFWD recipe, I made two batches of Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts, both with cashews. Very easy!!

I made the first batch (square dish) almost to the letter. My husband & I liked (but didn’t love) them the first day because the chili powder was a bit too dominant for us; however, it had mellowed by the next day and then they were perfect! The one thing I did differently from the recipe is that I dumped the whole mixture onto the baking sheet instead of separating the nuts & draining excess coating from them. I liked the extra baked-on coating and it was easy to break up the fused nuts once cooled (I rubbed off some of the coating for the photo for beauty’s sake).

 I have several recipes for spiced/flavored nuts that I love but Dorie’s method was new to me. I really like how it is so quick, easy, and yields crispy nuts. For my second batch (round dish), I added 1 T vanilla extract to the egg white and the spices were salt, coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and black pepper. Very nice but could have used more sugar and maybe more pepper (vanilla sugar would have been better than the extract because the extract watered down the rest of the flavors - or I will just use more of the spices next time). These ingredients are from our favorite nut recipe which uses pecans and a fairly involved process which takes two days. They are fantastic but using Dorie’s method with cashews was a snap. 

I'm looking forward to making these with the other spice mixtures that FFWDers have tried!

P.S. Last night I also made Gorogonzola-Apple Quiche from Around My French Table and it was excellent :).