A couple months back, I was talking with a friend about the kind of recipes that blow people’s socks off, but are actually super-easy to make. We both agreed that many candy recipes fall in this category; some candy takes artisan-level skill and effort, of course, but others — fudges, for example, and many caramels and candied fruits — can be thrown together pretty easily. And then there’s candied peanuts, which I’ve adored since David Lebovitz wrote them up in a blog post six years ago.

Lebovitz’s recipe is wonderful just as it is, but since the holiday season was approaching, I thought “well, let’s gild that lily!” When winter rolls around I always want citrus flavors, since so much is coming ripe in December–February, so I knew I wanted to incorporate something there, and around Christmastime I always start to show my Scandinavian roots by wanting to put cardamom in everything: orange-cardamom would be the flavor. “I should be able to bang that out this weekend,” I thought.

Oh, hubris. Two months and four pounds of peanuts later, I can tell you some things I’ve learned:

• I don’t care how much dried orange peel you have lying around, or how obvious that solution seems: it’s a non-starter.
• Cardamom is a very strong flavor, but caramel and toasted nuts are really strong, too, and undue caution leads to magically-undetectable cardamom.
• Subbing in orange juice for water not only gives you a slightly odd cooked orange flavor, but also may transform this recipe into the thinnest, saddest brittle recipe ever created.
• Raw peanuts with skins or without skins? This was my only initial worry, and it turns out to make no difference whatsoever. Go figure.

But my frustration is your gain, because I’ve got it now, and it should have been obvious from the start: freshly grated orange zest, combined with pungent cardamom, just enough to give a spicy undertone (I ground mine fresh, because I’m a spice nerd, but pre-ground cardamom should be just fine as long as it hasn’t been sitting in the spice cabinet since that theme party you threw for the Lillehammer Olympics).

So whether you’re looking for an unexpected snack for holiday guests, a thoughtful appreciation for the host of a party, or a last-minutes desperation gift for that one person you can never shop for: here you go. You really can’t go wrong with these simple, delicious nuts.