Paçoca de Amendoim

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Baking tray
• •Food processor or strong blender with pulse function
• •20 cm square pan
• •Parchment paper
• •Flat-bottomed cup for pressing

Instructions

1. 1

   Roast the peanuts

   Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Spread the peanuts on a baking tray in one layer and roast for 10 to 12 minutes, shaking the tray once, until they smell deeply nutty and turn a little darker. Don't wander off. Peanuts go from perfect to bitter faster than a person changes plans on a rainy June night.

   If your peanuts are already roasted and unsalted, use them. That's an honest shortcut. You lose the warm, fresh-roasted smell, but dinner is not a moral exam.
2. 2

   Cool and rub

   Let the peanuts cool for 10 minutes, then rub them between your hands or inside a clean towel to loosen some of the skins. Leave a little skin if you like the deeper flavor. Remove most of it if you want a paler, cleaner-looking paçoca. Both are yours.

3. 3

   Grind to sand

   Put the peanuts, cassava flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor. Pulse in short bursts until the mixture looks like damp sand, stopping to scrape the sides. Don't run the machine nonstop or you'll make peanut butter. Delicious, yes. Paçoca, no.

4. 4

   Check the clump

   Grab a spoonful and squeeze it hard in your fist. If it holds together, you've got the ponto. If it falls apart like dry beach sand, pulse a few more times so the peanut oil can come out and bind everything. Still too dry? Add the peanut oil, 1 teaspoon at a time, and pulse just until it clumps.

5. 5

   Press it firm

   Line a small 20 cm square pan with parchment. Pour in the mixture and press it down with the bottom of a cup, packing the corners first, then the center, until the surface feels firm and even. This pressure is what turns sweet crumbs into candy. Press shyly and it will collapse when you cut it, and then you'll blame the recipe. I won't allow it.

6. 6

   Rest and cut

   Let the pan sit at room temperature for 20 minutes, then lift the slab out and cut into small squares or rectangles with a sharp knife. Wipe the knife between cuts if the edges drag. The paçoca should break tenderly under your teeth, sandy and rich, not sticky and not dusty.

Chef Tips

• •Use cassava flour, farinha de mandioca, not wheat flour and not a sweet powder mix. The cassava flour gives paçoca its dry, sandy bite, the thing that makes you reach for coffee after the second piece.
• •Fine toasted cassava flour works best. If yours is coarse, pulse it alone first so the finished candy doesn't feel gritty in a bad way. Gritty from peanut and cassava is good. Pebbly is not dinner, it's gravel with ambition.
• •Salt matters. Half a teaspoon looks bossy, but it wakes up the peanut and keeps the sugar from flattening everything.
• •If you want it more crumbly, use the smaller amount of oil or none at all. If you want cleaner squares for wrapping, add the oil by teaspoons until the mixture holds. That's not cheating, that's adjusting.
• •Store it in a closed tin at room temperature for up to 1 week. It may dry a little as it sits, which is normal. Paçoca was never trying to be fudge.

Advance Preparation

• •Roast the peanuts up to 3 days ahead and keep them in a closed jar once fully cool.
• •The pressed paçoca can be made 2 days ahead and kept covered at room temperature.
• •For festa, cut the squares and wrap them in parchment the day before. Keep them away from humidity, because sugar and cassava flour drink moisture from the air.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 21g)