Vanilla Yogurt Parfait with Candied Nuts

Yogurt dressed up with vanilla bean and honey.  Homemade candied nuts (finally a success).  Favorite fruit combos.  All in an elegant wine glass.  Does it get any better?

First the nuts.  I have intended to blog about candied nuts sooner, but I sadly had two attempts that were disappointing.  But THIS time, they were perfect.  Thank you Laurie from Simply Scratch.


1 cup pecans
1 cup walnuts
1 cup white sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
egg whites from 2 eggs

PREHEAT OVEN TO 250 DEGREES.

Whisk up your egg whites with a splash of water until a light froth appears.

In a separate bowl combine three dry ingredients.

Add nuts.

Toss well with the whites.

Then add nuts to dry ingredients.  (I know, this recipe is THAT easy).

Spread out evenly on edged sheet pan.

Into the oven.

After 10 minutes.  Re-toss them.

After 10 more min (20 total), toss again.  Check out the sugars starting to bubble.  Patience.

10 final minutes (30 minutes total) and you have some lovely nuts.

They will be a little sticky still, but they'll harden soon enough.  Don't worry.

NOW for the yogurt.  Laurie used an already flavored yogurt.  But I stumbled into a spice store in downtown Portland and came home with a few vanilla beans and thus the breakfast brilliance began.

Only thing not pictured is the vanilla extract.

3 cups plain vanilla yogurt
1-2 tsp honey
1 tsp vanilla extract
the seeds of 1/2 vanilla bean
favorite assortment of fruit

Add vanilla extract to yogurt.

Chop vanilla bean in half.

Split it length-wise with knife.

Carefully scrape the lovely and fragrant seeds out of the bean.

In they go!  I love that the seeds SCREAM "I'm Vanilla!!!"

Add some honey, more if you want it sweeter.

I cut up strawberries, bananas and mango.  Mango is annoying to cut, but always worth the effort.

Then assemble fruit, yogurt, fruit, yogurt- finishing it off with your candied nuts on top.

This was D-LISH.