French Praliné (caramelized nuts butter) - The Pastry Nerd (2024)

Heat up water and sugar in a pan until it bubbles like shown in the photo.

Add your nuts to the pan, lower heat to middle high. From this point on, never stop stirring!

In the first few minutes, the sugar will crystallize around your nuts, it's normal. Again, keep stirring.

Then you will reach a point where only half of your nuts will be caramelized, so reduce the heat to low to make sure that the caramelized nuts won't burn while the other half has time to get caramelized as well.

Eventually, all your nuts will be caramelized! They are delicious on their own, you can keep them in a tight container for a month without a problem. Before you process them, make sure to wait until they completely cool down.

To make praline, you need a very powerful food processor or blender. Otherwise, you might not be able to grind the nuts to butter, or even worse, damage your processor.

Put your caramelized nuts in a food processor/blender and start processing. Grinding the nuts will release the natural oils in them that will make your praline liquid. The time it takes to do that entirely depends on the power of your food processor/blender. At first, you will get a powder, then slowly you will get a paste.

Check every 30 seconds while processing that your paste is not getting super hot. If it does get hot, open up your food processor/blender and wait until it cools down. Otherwise, you will damage the machine, plus your praline will have a burnt aftertaste. Add one or two tablespoons of neutral oil (I use canola or grapeseed oil) if your processor has trouble grinding the nuts.

Process until you get a paste that is liquid. You can keep it at room temperature for at least two months (if you can keep your hands off of it for that long). Enjoy!