Pumpkin Seed Brittle

When I was living in India, my dad would bring peanut and sesame seed brittle for me and my sisters and we used to love them.This is my first attempt to prepare a Brittle and when I tasted this brittle, though extremely tasty, it did not taste anything like what I was used to having. That was because I prepared this brittle using sugar, whereas the ones we get in India are mostly prepared with Jaggery (concentrated cane sugar which comes usually in the form of blocks). Very soon I will be uploading another instructable for a brittle using Jaggery :)

For the preparation of this brittle i have used Sugar pumpkin. Any kind of pumpkin can be used to prepare brittle and this recipe can be followed for making any kind of brittle.

• Wash the pumpkin very well
• Cut the top of the pumpkin which holds the stem, chop the pumpkin in half
• Scoop out all the seeds and membrane using a spoon
• Once the seeds and membrane was removed from the pumpkin, I removed the membrane as much as possible by hand and then put the seeds with the membranes that are stuck to the seeds in a colander and gave it a thorough wash
• Place paper towels on a plate and spread the seeds so the water can evaporate
• I let the seeds dry overnight so i can be sure that the seeds have no moisture left

• Take a wide base pan, spread the dried pumpkin seeds on the pan
• On low to medium heat, dry roast the seeds till you get nice aroma and the seeds swell a little. This took 4 - 5 minutes
• Remove the seeds and place on a plate to cool down

• Pumpkin Seeds - 3/4 up
• Sugar - 1 cup
• Unsalted butter - 2 tbsp
• Baking Soda - 1 tsp
• Water - 1/4 cup
• Salt - 1/4 tsp
• Vanilla Essence - 1 tbsp

• On a cookie sheet, place parchment paper and spray it very evenly with cooking spray
• Take a large heavy pan and put sugar and water and let it come to a complete boil
• Add salt and butter and keep stirring and let it cook till the temperature reaches 300 F
• Remove from flame, add vanilla essence and mix
• Add baking soda and the mixture will bubble up ferociously, keep stirring
• Add the pumpkin seeds and mix well
• Pour the mixture on the cookie tray placed with parchment paper and spread it immediately to get a flat base. To make it super flat, i sprayed another parchment paper with cooking spray and placed this parchment paper on top of the mixture. I then placed a flat based pan on top of the parchment paper and pressed it,to get a flat thin brittle
• Let it cool for 30 minutes
• Remove the parchment paper and break the brittle as needed. Store in airtight container. Done :)
• In case the parchment paper gets stuck to the brittle, which should not happen if the paper was sprayed generously with cooking spray,dip a kitchen towel in hot water and squeeze out the water well and place the towel on the part of the brittle,which is stuck to the parchment paper for 2-3 minutes and the paper will come out easily