Paçoca (Pressed Ground Peanut Candy)

Name: Paçoca (Pressed Ground Peanut Candy)
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 18 min
Total time: 43 min
Yield: 12 servings
Cuisine: Brazilian
Ingredients: 300 g raw peanuts; 100 g sugar; 1 pinch salt; 40 g cassava flour

A Brazilian peanut candy. Roasted peanuts are ground with sugar, stopped the moment their oil comes out and a squeezed handful holds, and pressed hard into a mould. There is no honey, no syrup and no water; the only binder is the peanuts' own oil. So the grind has an edge on each side: short of it nothing holds, past it you have peanut butter. The name comes from a Tupi word for "to crumble", and crumbling in the mouth is the point.

Ingredients

12servings

Paçoca (12 small pieces)
raw peanuts · shelled; if already roasted, skip the roasting300 g
sugar100 g
salt1 pinch
cassava flour · farinha de mandioca; leave it out, or use finely crushed crackers40 g

Steps

Spread the peanuts in one layer on a tray and roast at 170°C for 15-18 minutes, until pale brown right through. Shake them once halfway.
⏲ 17 min
Let them cool completely, then rub them between your palms and blow the skins away. Ground hot, they give up their oil all at once and there is no moment to stop.
⏲ 20 min
Put the peanuts, sugar and salt in a food processor and grind in short pulses, squeezing a handful between each.
The crumbs run like sand, and then a squeezed handful keeps the shape of your fist without falling apart — stop there. If the mass has started to turn as one ball, like a dough, you are past it. Stop before that.
If using cassava flour, tip everything into a bowl and work it in by hand. Mixing it in the machine grinds the peanuts further while you do.
Spoon it into small glasses or a square tin a little at a time and press hard with the flat bottom of a glass, layer by layer rather than all at once.
Turn the mould over and tap it out. If it crumbles, it was under-pressed or under-ground: gather it and press it again. Keep airtight.

Tips & Variations

Variations

As a slab: pressed into a wide tray with whole peanuts set into the top, then cut, as in the photograph.
With condensed milk: a variation ko.wikipedia records. A spoonful or two makes it hold more easily and taste softer, and crumbles less in the mouth.
Other flours: corn flour or almond flour instead of cassava. The flour shares out the oil, so the more you add, the further you have to grind before it holds.
Cork-shaped: the small cylinders sold in Brazilian shops are this, pressed through a narrow mould.

Tips

The binder is the peanuts' own oil. Dasik also sets without water or heat, but "the only thing binding it is honey", with the carved mould's pressure doing the rest. Paçoca has no honey. Grinding the peanuts breaks their cells and lets the oil out, and the oil wets the crumbs and holds them together. The pressing does the same job as in dasik.
What is a failure elsewhere is the target here. Baklava chops its nuts by knife and says why: "A blender presses out oil and packs the pieces into a paste" — and between the layers that paste glues them together. That packing is exactly what paçoca wants.
The stopping point has an edge on each side. ko.wikipedia says to press it once the grinding has brought out enough oil that a squeezed handful holds, before it goes so far as to become peanut butter. Short of that there is too little oil and it collapses as it leaves the mould; past it the oil coats every crumb and you have a soft paste. Pulsing and squeezing is how you keep from missing the gap.
Goma-ae stops at the same point. Grinding its toasted sesame: "You want oil coming out and the mass clumping like a damp crumb." There it is loosened with soy and dashi into a dressing; paçoca presses it as it is.
The sugar never dissolves. With no water there is no syrup, and the sugar stays as crystals ground in with the peanuts. That is where the sandy grain of paçoca comes from.
Grind the peanuts cold. Hot, they give up their oil all at once and run straight to a paste.
The opposite use of the same oil: in suya the peanut spice is "peanut roasted and then pressed to take the oil out." Over a fire the oil is the problem; in a pressed candy it is the glue.