Add as much cayenne or other spicy chile powder as you like. Pure ancho or chipotle powder are especially good here.
Ingredients
1egg white
1/3cupsugar
2TCreole seasoning purchased or make your own
10ozpecan halves
Instructions
Preheat oven to 300° and place a piece of parchment on a cookie sheet. Alternatively, use a silicone baking pan liner.*
In a medium bowl, whisk egg white until frothy. Whisk in sugar and creole seasoning. Using a spatula, stir in pecan halves, making sure to coat them evenly and completely.
Pour the nuts onto the parchment-lined baking sheet, ensuring they are in a single layer. There shouldn’t be much gooey eggy spicy liquid, but if there is, don’t scrape it all out of the bowl and onto the pan. It will just stick to the parchment and will make for more difficult nut removal.
Bake the nuts at 300° for 15 minutes. Give the nuts a stir – I used a large off-set spatula to do the dirty work – then reduce the oven to 250° and bake the nuts for another 10 minutes. Immediately give the nuts another stir to release them from the parchment. Allow them to cool and store in an airtight container (something with a padlock would have been helpful here) for as long as you can stand not eating them.
Note: While they began as a Martha-Stewart-trendy baking accessory way back in the 90s, silicone pan liners are readily available now both online and in stores (use that Bed, Bath and Beyond coupon). They are a huge help when baking sticky things like florentines and fortune cookies.