Microwave Pralines

These are SO easy and SO good! So once I was watching that hot chef guy with the wavy blonde hair(he's almost as cute as my husband) from Australia who meets you in the supermarket and comes home with you and cooks you and your family a delicious meal. And he was making carmelized pecans and just put sugar on the stove and melted it and threw nuts in and made it look so effortless! So I'm like "oh yeah chef baby, I can do that!" Um......I guess not. Didn't quite work out. So I experiemented some and came up with this recipe, it turns out perfect every time, no disasters! And the nuts actually get toasty in the microwave. You can use any nuts you want with this, I usually use pecans but sometimes I use walnuts for salads. These are so delicious on top of holiday pies! The pics I will post show me making more than 1 cup, because I was making extra for Thanksgiving.

Microwave Pralines
Print Recipe

4 Tablespoons Butter
4 Tablespoons Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Vanilla
1/8 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 cup Nuts

In a microwave-safe GLASS or ceramic type dish, melt butter. (The temp on these gets pretty hot, if you use plastic of any kind it will melt. Just trust me.:(
Add sugar and stir in.
Then stir in vanilla and cinnamon. Add nuts, stir again. Cover and place in microwave, cook on high for 1 minute. Take out and stir. You can see here that your nuts will be starting to toast and mixture will be wet still, like corn syrup.
Put back in microwave for 1 minute on high. Take out, and stir again. Your nuts will be almost done and getting toasted! Put back in for 30 seconds on high. You should see clumps of sugar, which will set up as your nuts sit for a few minutes. These are delicious just to eat, I have to hide them from my nut-crazy husband if I'm using them in a recipe!
**NOTES: My microwave is on the high-watt end, and cooks quickly. Yours may take an extra 30 seconds or so, just watch them at the end so you don't fry them. Also, like I said in the beginning of my post I sometimes double this recipe. When you do, just increase cooking time. For example, with 2 cups I will cook them for 2 minutes first, then stir. Then 1 minute. Then about 30 seconds more, with maybe 1 more 30 second interval. You are looking for your nuts to be toasty and for the sugar to be clumping up and hardening some, it will finish setting up on the counter when you are done.