2 ½ cups unsalted, raw cashews
1 tablespoon butter, melted
2 teaspoons dried, cracked rosemary
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Place cashews on a baking sheet.
Bake in the preheated oven until warmed through, 10 to 12 minutes stirring them every 3-4 minutes until just beginning to brown.
Meanwhile, melt the butter. Pour into a mixing bowl and stir in the rosemary, brown sugar, salt, and cayenne pepper.
Pour warm cashews into the rosemary mixture and toss to coat.
Serve warm or allow to cool to room temperature.
Notes:
1) Do not use more butter than the recipe calls so. It just makes the mixture gummy (according to reviewers – I didn’t try it).
2) These are very good but it’s difficult to get the salt-sugar-spice mixture to stay on the cashews. It tends to clump.
Possible solution 1:The original recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of kosher salt instead of 1-1/2 teaspoons of table salt and also calls for 2 tablespoons of chopped, fresh rosemary, instead of 2 teaspoons of dried, cracked rosemary. That might work better, but I don’t know if I would want to buy the kosher salt and fresh rosemary just for this recipe. Also, it might be that mixing together the butter and sugar will clump regardless of the other ingredients.
Possible solution 2: The original recipe calls for mixing the butter into the roasted cashews first, then mixing in the salt, sugar and spices. However, recipe reviewers suggested against this. I think it would be worth mixing the salt and spices together first and putting them in a spice bottle with holes. Next, mix the cashews with butter and dump them out on a cookie sheet. Finally, sprinkle the spice mixture evenly out over top of the cashews.