Dairy free life – Halloween pumpkin seed brittle

This is the perfect thing to combine with a bit of pumpkin carving – you’ll have to get the seeds out of the pumpkin anyway and if you then wash and dry them they make a really tasty sugary Halloween treat to nibble on whilst trying to work out how to get the eyes on your pumpkin to look more or less the same

It doesn’t have to be dairy free, it works equally well with butter as dairy free spread

Dairy free pumpkin seed brittle

55g dairy free spread (or butter if you’re not dairy free)

100g light brown sugar

85g honey

Handful of washed & dried pumpkin seeds

Essential kit – thermometer

Grease and line a baking tray making sure you really, really grease it well or you’ll struggle to get the brittle off when it has cooled.

Melt the butter in a medium sized saucepan.

When it’s fully melted add the sugar and honey and bring to the boil.

Stir frequently and bring up to 140 degrees C, stir in the pumpkin seeds and bring back to the boil – keep stirring frequently so it doesn’t burn.  You need it to reach 150 degrees C to make it sufficiently brittle – if you prefer it chewier then just cook the pumpkin seeds in the sugary mix for a couple of minutes.

When it has reached 150 degrees C, pour it out onto the greased and lined baking tray and spread out.

Put to one side to cool (to speed things up when it not totally hot you can pop it into the fridge to cool it quickly).

Once cool peel off from the baking parchment (which you’ll have greased really well and so won’t have any problems doing…) and break into small pieces.

Then try to prevent your family eating it all before the Halloween parties – if you’ve invited us over please act surprised when we turn up with a bag of this!

This is a variation on Martha Stewart’s recipe