Welcome to our Holiday Bake, Craft & Sew along!  All the baking ideas can be found here and the Craft ideas on Kelly’s Blog and Sewing on Cindy’s. Make sure to visit each of them every day for amazing Holiday Gift inspirations!

Today’s featured Baker is Karly from Buns In My Oven.

I love the idea of a homemade Christmas, but I can think of one problem. It’s a big one. If you make all of your gifts at home you’ll miss out on the experience of heading to the mall! What? You think that sounds just fine to you? But, what about the nuts? You know, the delicious smelling nuts that lure you in the minute you walk through the doors of the mall. It’s just not Christmas without the roasted nuts!

This year, while you’re at home sewing or baking or crafting (is that a word?) your homemade Christmas gifts you need these nuts. No, really. You NEED them. Making gifts is hard work and these will give you the energy you require to make the very best gifts you can make! Better yet, you can go ahead and dress these up in pretty packaging and hand them out as gifts. Just be sure to save a few for yourself.

This is a totally simple way to wow your family and friends and it’s a fun change from the usual Christmas cookie!

Just grab a big can of nuts, any will do. Almonds, pecans, peanuts, mixed nuts, whatever. I use mix nuts. Variety is the spice of life, after all.

Dump ‘em in a big bowl, pour in a beaten egg white, stir it up and dump on the sugar and spice. Mix it up, pop the nuts in the oven for 30 minutes or so and all of your dreams will come true. It’ll be a Christmas miracle right there in your kitchen.

These are yummy right out of the oven (Be careful, though! Hot sugar is, well, really hot.), so go ahead and sample some. After all, baking, sewing, and crafting Christmas gifts is hard work! Not to worry, though, these store perfectly. Find yourself an air tight container, decorate it up all pretty, and you have the perfect Christmas gift. These stay fresh for a good week or two, but I don’t think they’ll last that long!

Sugar and Spice Candied Nuts
Recipe adapted from Smitten Kitchen

• 2 pounds nuts (any kind, I prefer mixed)
• 2 egg whites, room temperature
• 2 tbsp water
• 2/3 cup dark-brown sugar
• 1 1/3 cup white granulated sugar
• 3 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper (you could use paprika if you’re a scaredy-pants, but the cayenne works well)
• 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees. Add nuts to large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg whites and water until frothy. Pour over nuts and stir to coat all the nuts. In a separate bowl, mix together the sugars, salt, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon. Pour over nuts and stir to coat. Spread nuts in a single layer on a parchment  lined baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes stirring occasionally. Remove from oven and separate nuts if they are stuck together. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store in an airtight container.

Meet Karly, aka the brillant mind behind the deliciously edible feast for the eyes and the stomach baking blog, Buns In My Oven

I’m a homeschooling mother of two.  Between schooling my kids and my new photography business, my family still demands that I feed them every day and they don’t consider cold cereal a meal.  I decided that if I had to cook, I may as well enjoy myself.  In the ten years that I’ve been married I’ve moved up from frozen pizzas to hamburger helper to, well, this.   It’s not fancy (my kids and husband don’t DO fancy), but it’s homemade and it’s darn tasty.