Vanilla Caramel Pecan

What is it?

The pecans are caramelized as well as toasted, so the caramel arrives twice: once as a sauce running through the base and again as a coating on the nuts. That coating is doing more than adding sweetness. Cooked sugar seals the nut against the moisture around it, which is what keeps a pecan crisp in a frozen tub instead of going soft over a few weeks. Pecan is the richest of the common nuts by fat, so it reads soft and almost sweet next to a walnut, even though its skin carries some of the same tannins. Against caramel that's an extension rather than a contrast, which makes this the sweetest of the three-element flavors in the range.