English Toffee

"An easy candy favorite at Christmas time."
 
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photo by DeliciousAsItLooks photo by DeliciousAsItLooks
photo by DeliciousAsItLooks
photo by Anonymous photo by Anonymous
photo by Kristeena photo by Kristeena
photo by Lee L. photo by Lee L.
photo by Katelyn C. photo by Katelyn C.
Ready In:
25mins
Ingredients:
6
Yields:
1 pound
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ingredients

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directions

  • In heavy saucepan, combine butter, sugar, water, and salt.
  • Cook to hard-crack stage (300°F) stirring with a WOODEN SPOON constantly and watching carefully. Do not try a plastic spoon, it will melt into your delicious candy!
  • Immediately pour into ungreased 13"x9" pan.
  • Cool until hard.
  • Melt chocolate over hot, but not boiling water.
  • Spread over toffee; sprinkle with nuts, pressing them into chocolate.
  • Let stand 2-3 hours or chill 30 minutes.
  • Break into bite-size pieces.

Questions & Replies

  1. I making this recipe following directions exactly and before it ever gets up to 300 in Carmel looking it’s starting to separate off butter what am I doing wrong
     
  2. Hi, my name is Sherry and I plan on making this for Chinese New Year. I am Chinese but I am also English. I'm sorta doing an around my nationality globe dinner and wanted to fix this. I was wondering how far in advance this could be made and if it can be frozen and if so what is the process for thawing it out? It looks delicious and I can't wait to make it and try it. Thank you in advance for all the help.
     
  3. I only have 1stick butter 1 stick sweet cream butter. Would it be ok. And can I add flavoring at the end
     
  4. Can vanilla be added? Or should it?
     
  5. Help! Tastes delicious but I can’t get it out of my glass pan wo it falling to bits?!
     
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Reviews

  1. Wonderful and easy. Reminds me a bunch of some toffee I had at Disneyland. I made this last night for a New Year's Eve party - it was a huge hit! A couple of tips I used: 1. Use a Silpat (silicone) pan liner and put it on a large baking sheet or jelly roll pan. It won't spill out if you've cooked it to 300F. 2. Keep that pan close to the stove. I had mine across the kitchen and by the time I walked over with my pot to pour out the toffee, it was a tiny bit burned - but not a problem. 3. Give it a few minutes to soft-set, then "score" it with a pizza cutter. If you do it too soon, it will just merge together again and you can run over your lines again. 4. After scoring, I spread the chocolate chips, like others, and let them warm this way then used an off-set spatula (greatest invention in the world in my opinion) to spread. After spreading chocolate, I topped with pecans, a bit more finely chopped - just a preference. 5. If you are in a hurry, which I was, stick your pan in the fridge to get the chocolate to set. **I like my toffee with chocolate on both sides 6. When chocolate has set flip the whole mass over and heat more chocolate chips in microwave, stiring every 30 seconds until melted. Then coat the bottom with chocolate and add the pecans again. When hardened, just put pressure on it in the center to break it up. **If you wanted to be super-particular, you could break the toffee up before putting any chocolate on it into perfect squares, or rectangles, dip them in melted chocolate and roll them in finely chopped pecans - that's how I had it at Disney. Thanks for posting this recipe. I love simple and wonderful things.
     
  2. I've made four batches so far. I also put the chocolate chips on the warm toffee, let it sit and then go back and spread the melted chocolate. I used slivered almonds instead of pecans. I put a cup of the almonds in the candy just before pouring it on the silpat. I then crushed the rest and sprinkled them on top of the melted chocolate.
     
  3. I made this recipe several times this Christmas, and had good/great success. However, I would like to add a note that might be helpful to those readers who had butter separation issues. Most of us consider recipes to be a little of this and a little of that, and tah dah - something amazing happens. And usually it does. What we forget is that food is not only art, but it is also science. Candy making, specifically toffee making, is a time when this comes into play - dare I say chemistry? For those who want the short version, adding water, a tablespoon or so at a time, if your mixture separates, will often bring this back together. Some recipes calls for water (anywhere from 1 tablespoon to 1/4 cup), but it may not be enough, depending on a few factors. For those interested in a longer version, read on. This particular recipe calls for 1/4 c. water. On my gas stove (and remember, yours may be a bit different, so be patient with trial and error if you are serious about making toffee), in a 2 qt saucepan with a diameter of 7 3/4 inches, 1/4 cup of water will boil away in about 8- 10 minutes on med-high heat. When using this recipe on med- high heat, it takes about 10 minutes for the sugar/butter mixture to come to 300 degrees. However, during the time of bringing the mixture to temp, there is an evaporation process going on. If the mixture caramelizes just before the water evaporates, the mixture stays together and the toffee is perfect. If however, the mixture does separate, it means that all the water has escaped as steam before the desired temp is reached, and a little more water is needed to finish the process. That's why adding a tablespoon at a time while stirring usually brings this back together. That is also why it is almost impossible to make toffee on a humid day, because the steam escapes too slowly, requiring a longer cooking time to cook out the water, and thus burning the mixture in the process. In addition, I tried making this in my griswold cast iron skillet - with a diameter of 11". This actually worked pretty well WHEN I had the heat high enough to bring the candy up before the water evaporated out of the mixture, which happened more quickly due to the increased surface area of the skillet. Hence the recommendation from most experts to use a 2 qt saucepan, as this slows down the evaporation process slightly. Also, to stir, or not to stir - some recipes say stir continuously, some stir occasionally, others not at all. One lovely blogger from Oregon explained her reasoning for NOT stirring, again based on chemistry - Sugar's natural tendency is to crystalize. Stirring throws the sugar/butter mixture up onto the sides of the pot, where thesugar naturally creates crystal seeds. If these are scraped back in to the bubbling mixture, they contribute seeds that cause the entire mix to become grainy. This can be addressed by brushing down the sides with hot water and a brush (there we go, adding that bit of water again), or by placing a lid over the pot, creating steam, that causes the sugar to return to it's liquid state. Of course, you can't use your candy thermometer with the lid on, but you will quickly become accustomed to the color you are looking for and can insert the thermometer for the last minute or two. When you combine the issues of 1. additional water and 2. stirring, here is what I did. Using a heavy saucepan, I did not stir. The mixture did not burn, and came together nicely for most of the batches. On a couple of batches when the mixture began to separate, I added HOT water, a Tablespoon at a time, and stirred briefly to incorporate. I was able to salvage every batch. The stirred batches were perhaps a bit more grainy, but imperceptible to my crew. One final note, I am not a chemist, but a chemist enthusiast when it comes to food. There are many others more expert than I, and so if you happen to know more about this chemical process than I do, please respond. Not only will it help me, but it will also help others as they look for solutions to improve the outcome of their efforts. Happy New Year to all.
     
  4. I chose this recipe for English toffee since I misplaced my regular recipe and I couldn't send out cookie trays without it :) This recipe was very easy. I did the process a little different ~ I poured the hot toffee onto a greased jelly roll pan and let it harden, which is very quick. Then I scattered the chocolate chips over the toffee and spread them out as they melted then scattered the pecans over the chocolate. I refrigerated until the chocolate hardened and then broke into pieces. Very simple. The toffee is delish! Thanks for posting!
     
  5. One star for the recipe which is very good, but the recipe clearly states do not grease pan so going against my better judgment I did not... I shattered a pyrex trying to get it out because I did not grease it AND had to throw away all of the toffee because it had shards of glass in it. So in conclusion GREASE YOUR PAN so you can get it out... No this is not my first time at the rodeo folks, as dumb as I sound for doing this I am a professional chef.
     
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Tweaks

  1. 1. Double the recipe for all ingretients if using a 9x13 pan. 2. Line your pan with tin foil (shiny side up) for easy removal. 3. I prefer using a wisk to a wooden spoon. 4. It's important that the butter is brought to the boiling point first. Then add the water and again bring to the boiling point, THEN add the sugar and salt. Boiling the butter and water will dissolve the sugar crystals very quickly. This will keep the batch from recrystallizing during the cooking process. 5. USE A CANDY THERMOMETER! This toffee is perfect when brought to 308 degrees F. It's almost impossible to guess the temperature exactly. 6. If you have a high end, expensive stove, be careful... you do not want to raise the temperature of the candy too quickly as you have the chance of the ingredients separating.
     
  2. I have been making this for years, and I have some suggestions... This candy is sensitive to humidity, and looses it's melt-in-mouth pop if you don't treat it right. If you put it in the refrigerator, water will condense on it when you take it out... you still have candy, but it is not very good now. DO NOT cool in refrigeration, then expose it to warm air. I cool my candy sealed from the air. I heat the chocolate chips by melting them on the hot candy, sealing it from air. So do THIS: pour the hot candy in a shallow oven pan, lined with good parchment (not the cheap stuff) quickly spreading it as thin as you want. If you cook a double batch just level it in the pan quickly, then sprinkle the chocolate chips of choice. sprinkle them in one layer, give then about 20 seconds to start melting, then start spreading them flat with a silicone spatula. over another 30 seconds to a minute the chocolate will be really well melted, spread it to the edges, sealing all the way to the edge so you see no visible candy. Sprinkle your nuts or other toppings, pressing them into the chocolate. Now let it cool. Once cool place a sheet of parchment on the counter, and carefully pull your slab out, and place it chocolate-side down on the parchment, and peel off the parchment from the bottom. Then take a large metal spoon, and break it up into chunks small enough for a candy dish, by smacking the sheet with the bottom of the spoon, using the spoon like a hammer. You know, like they do with the blue stuff in Breaking Bad... Make sure to get this batch into sealed bags as soon as possible so it stays fresh. Humidity is the enemy of your toffee.
     
  3. Highly recommend using a whisk instead of spoon. A whisk just mixes the hot sugar and butter better.
     
  4. This will not turn out well if Rainey or in a high humidity. It just don’t set up well, even if you cook it to hard crack stage..
     
  5. I've made four batches so far. I also put the chocolate chips on the warm toffee, let it sit and then go back and spread the melted chocolate. I used slivered almonds instead of pecans. I put a cup of the almonds in the candy just before pouring it on the silpat. I then crushed the rest and sprinkled them on top of the melted chocolate.
     

RECIPE SUBMITTED BY

I am married and have three children ages 9 to 16. I work full-time so between work and attending as many school functions as I can possibly fit in, I have little time to prepare "gourmet" type dishes which require a lot of preparation time. I like tasty, quick-fix meals that use ingredients that are usually in my house and don't require an extra trip to the store. When I'm not waiting on my family or working, I like to do counted cross-stitch and recently started a new hobby----quilting.
 
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