Making almond roca...?

I'm trying to make almond roca, but my last attemp didn't work out. For the first half of cooking (2C butter, 2C sugar, on med-low heat), it looked great! But after that, it started to look lumpy and started separating. It looked kind of like applesauce. I cooked it on med-low heat in a large teflon pan.





Any advice? Did I maybe stir too much? I definitely didn't stir not enough.. I'm not in a humid climate or high altitude.. I am one more bad batch of almond roca away from giving up hope! Please help!|||I think that your recipe is too big. Make it in smaller batches. Here is a recipe that I found on the www.


Almond Roca Recipe


Use an inexpensive chocolate such as Hershey's. It has low cocoa butter content. If you use a premium chocolate with a high cocoa butter content, unless you temper the chocolate first (look up directions online), the cocoa butter may separate into white streaks as the melted chocolate cools.


INGREDIENTS


1 cup sugar


1/4 cup water


1 Tbsp light corn syrup


1/2 lb butter (2 sticks - NO substitutes!)


1/2 lb. slivered almonds (2 cups)


1/2 lb. bar of regular Hershey's dark chocolate (7 oz okay)


METHOD


Do not attempt to make this on a humid or rainy day. Do not double the recipe, make one batch at a time.


1 Melt butter with sugar, syrup and water in a pan (such as a large non-stick frying pan) on medium to medium-high temperature. Stir continuously with a wooden spoon. When butter is melted, add the almonds.


2 When mixture comes to a rolling boil, set your timer for a minimum of 10 minutes and keep stirring (no more than 15 minutes). The mixture will thicken and turn darker in color. The almonds will roast. Keep stirring and cooking until you hear it crackle. If you don't cook it long enough it will not harden, so keep stirring and listen for the crackling sound.


Elise's note: I have found it very hard to distinguish between the boiling sound and the crackling sound in this recipe. A better guideline for me is by color. When the mixture turns a warm amber color, at about 11 or 12 minutes into the boiling, that's the time to pour it out. Wait too long and it will burn.


If you try to make this, please read all the comments listed below. It's actually trickier than one would think.


3 When the mixture crackles, pour the mixture out onto a large cookie sheet and spread it as thin as possible with a fork. While it is still hot, break up the chocolate into chunks and distribute it over the almond mixture and let it melt. Spread it evenly on the top.


4 Let it cool to room temperature. When cool you can lift the whole thing off the pan and break into small pieces.|||I have had better luck with peanut brittle, almond roca and almond bark making them in the microwave instead of the stove. You have better control of the temperatures once you have perfected the recipe. I can knock out peanut brittle in 6 minutes and almond bark in about 3 minutes.|||Candy making demands an accurate thermometer. Looks are not an accurate indicator of temperature. Invest in a good one, take care of it, and you'll benefit by not ruining ingredients far and above the cost of the thermometer.|||Did you double the recipe? That's what it sounds like. It's gone - just do it over in the original batch, usually 1C to 1C.





It's happened to me, and I don't know the chemistry behind it.