Food Friday - Divinity

By request... (sorry Sugar and Spice girls - this is NOT helpful with our attempts to be more healthy)

This is actually just the recipe that came with my Kitchen Aid - it has very specific instructions about what speed etc. (My K.A. has speeds from 0-10 for reference.)

3 C sugar
3/4 C light corn syrup
1/2 C water
2 egg whites
1 t almond extract
1 C chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
(I've also seen recipes with zest of orange or maraschino cherries)

Place sugar, corn syrup, and water in heavy saucepan. Cook and stir over medium heat to hard ball stage (use a candy thermometer or place some cold water in a cup and when a drop of the mixture make a "hard ball" you know you're there). Remove from heat and let stand until temperature drops to 220, without stirring.

Place egg whites in mixer bowl. Attach bowl and wire whip to mixer. Turn to Speed 8 and whip about 1 minute, or until soft peaks form. Gradually add syrup in a fine stream and whip about 2 1/2 minutes longer.

Turn to Speed 4. Add almond extract and whip 20 to 25 minutes, or until mixture starts to become dry. Turn to Stir Speed and add nuts, mixing just until blended.

Drop mixture from measuring tablespoon onto waxed paper or greased baking sheet to form patties.

Let them stand for approximately 1 hour (until they cool and harden). Eat (but not too many).

Kitchen Aid Trick (free of charge, just for having read this far):
If you have a K.A. classic (the kind where the bowl is locked into place and the arm is lowered into the bowl) you may find that the bowl can get pretty wedged into place while doing long-term mixing (especially bread dough kneading). To prevent this from happening, I spray a little bit of cooking oil (like Pam) onto the metal where the bowl is secured. This acts as a lubricant and I don't have to use heavy tools to un-wedge the bowl when the mixing/kneading is done. It only took me about five years to figure out this trick. Five years of muscle work out every time I made bread or divinity (ok, I maybe make divinity once every five years but I make a lot of bread!).