No matter what the internet says . . . .

Maybe it's my fault - I didn't search long enough, hard enough, I didn't use the right term. I failed to find a recipe for peanut brittle that didn't call for corn syrup* - correction - I found one, read the reviews and decided I could use the corn syrup substitution I found here in a regular recipe.

I was so confident, I even doubled the batch.

I never got above 250. This is the temperature where my sugar spontaneously metamorphosed into a bubbling mass of crystals. quickly I added water and brought the temp up again. Poof. Two-hundred and fifty degrees and I have a hardening ball of grainy sugar and nuts. Maybe adding the butter and baking powder would help? Alas, no. This didn't help.

Any ideas of what to do with roughly 5 cups of super sugary peanut clumps. appreciated. My one hopeless thought is to give them as gifts anyways since Ukrainians don't know what peanut brittle is, won't know what I'm giving them anyway and will just accept it as odd clumpy sugary peanuts.

*Corn syrup is similar to golden syrup. Neither has been spotted here.