Peanut Brittle

If you grew up in the South, chances are you remember your grandma making the salty-sugary crunchy goodness known as peanut brittle. A Southern woman actually created peanut brittle by mistake when adding baking soda instead of cream of tartar to her taffy. Easy to get those bottles mixed up, right? It was 1890, and ingredients were precious commodities, so rather than wasting them, she just went right on cooking, and the result was the crunchy brittle and not the chewy taffy.

Peanuts are a bumper crop in Southern climates, so it's not a stretch that the brittle is a Southern invention. In fact, sometimes peanuts were all that Civil War soldiers had to eat. After the war, when George Washington Carver began showing in the early 1900s the diverse ways to use peanuts, their popularity increased. By now, the popularity of brittle candy has spread across the country and the world, and you can enjoy it wherever you are. Wherever there are sweet liquids like honey and molasses in the world, you can be sure that brittles are made there. But why not get the best?