I've never had peanut brittle (or any brittle, for that matter). I'm just now starting to like nuts, and it just always sounded like an old-people food, something I would only start to enjoy from the front porch of a retirement community home. But when Lauren pinned this, I knew I could - and would - get on board immediately. That is foodie brittle. Design-y brittle. Young-people brittle!The only thing I changed was adding a little vanilla bean to the mix. I just love seeing those little black specks, and the aroma always makes me swoon.
I regard caramel the same way I regard bread-making: with much trepidation and superstition. It stresses me out to stir a mixture of sugar and water over high heat, watching it slowly thicken and darken, until at some point it reaches a pinnacle of caramel-ness - for about 2 seconds, before it crashes down into a burnt block of cement in your pan, and you have to start all over again.
But the potential payoff outweighs the anxiety of the process. 'Cause, come on, it's caramel. Who doesn't love caramel? Especially caramel in brittle form that tastes exactly like roasted marshmallows and melts in your mouth. And that's studded with pretty pistachios (I will never tire of that green) and sprinkled with the tiniest amount of sea salt. (If there is any foodie bandwagon I have jumped on, it's the "salt on sweets" bandwagon.)
These would make a great, "easy" (see third paragraph) food gift. Or something that you make a double-batch of and hoard in your retirement-community-home room, not sharing with any of the other old people. Another bandwagon I will be jumping on, in just a few short decades.