Mixing Up The Holiday Nuts

I've been riffing on my favorite homemade gift for my friends

As soon as Thanksgiving is over, I get started on my favorite homemade holiday gift: the nuts.

More precisely, my sweet and spicy pecans. I began making them more than a decade ago, after I tasted some that were made by a gourmet shop. They were delicious, and they were also $24 for a 12 ounce package.

Of course the cost of ingredients and labor have to be taken into account, but as I’ve learned from buying nuts all these years, that’s about a 50 percent profit margin baked into those nuts.

I wrote about my nuts — or as my friends call them, the nuts — for The Takeout a few years ago. That basic recipe can be found here.

However, in the past few holiday seasons, I’ve been mixing up the way I prepare my nuts. Here are some tips that you can try.