Simple English Toffee Recipe - My Frugal Adventures (2024)
By Charlene3 Comments
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Oh goodness this is such a delicious treat! Are you a fan of toffee or Almond Rocha? I love it and you won’t believe how easy it is to make at home.
I am warning you now to just go ahead and make a double batch because this stuff is pretty irresistible once you get your first bite.
This is very easy to make and comes together in about 15 minutes. I do have a few notes below for you that will make the process a bit smoother and ensure a perfect toffee 🙂
The best part about making homemade toffee is that you can totally customize this for your tastes or your recipient.
Below is the classic toffee recipe but you can add different chocolates (dark a drizzle of white on top and so on), different nuts, a sprinkle of sea salt etc… to make this your own.
Take a jelly pan or (2) casserole dishes and line with parchment or butter very well. Set aside.
To get started place your butter in a heavy saucepan over medium low heat.
Once melted add the sugar and water and stir well.
Increase the heat to medium high and bring the mixture to boil.
Be very careful not to overcook!
I continuously stir as the mixture bubbles up and gets a little frothy.
Once the color of the mixture turns from yellow to a soft brown, immediately remove from heat and quickly pour into a casserole dish or jelly pan. This should be about 5 minutes and around 300 degrees on a candy thermometer.
Use a spatula to evenly spread the mixture into your dish and you might bang it on the counter a few times to remove any bubbles.
Now take your chocolate chips and place them in a double broiler or the microwave. Micro in 30 sec intervals until completely melted. If you prefer the double broiler, just remove once the chips are all creamy. I think a double broiler is worth the extra minute or two of effort to ensure the chocolate is perfectly smooth.
Spoon evenly over the toffee mixture.
Now add your chopped nuts to the top of the chocolate and gently press down with a spatula or spoon.
You can also sprinkle a tiny bit of sea salt over the top.
Once the mixture has cooled slightly, place in the fridge to harden for about 1 hour.
Use a knife to gently break the toffee apart and store in a sealed bag or container in the fridge.
The toffee is very sticky so you want to butter your dish very, very well before pouring the toffee in. You could probably use parchment paper as well to line your dish.
If you have a jelly pan that is perfect for this recipe, otherwise you can use (2) casserole dishes (9×13 size) and this recipe won’t quite fill both.
If you undercook the toffee portion, it will still taste good but the toffee is harder to chew. Like a thick salt water taffy. I found refrigerating it or putting it in the freezer helps harden it a bit.
If you are using unsalted butter, you might add just the tiniest bit of salt to the butter, sugar, water mixture. I used salted butter and actually sprinkled a little sea salt on the very top of my chocolate layer as well for a sea salt caramel flavor.
The butter mixture will go from bright yellow bubbles to burned very quickly. Be sure your dish is ready and you are stirring constantly as you don’t want to burn the toffee. It will continue to cook so you want to spoon it from the saucepan very, very quickly.
You can use large nuts or finely chopped nuts- depending on your preference. I used chopped almonds and processed them in the food processor for just a minute or two for a finer consistency- like an Almond Rocha.
And that is it! Easy peasy!
This is a fantastic homemade gift idea and a great party snack as you can chop this into bite size pieces.
Here is your finished product in the pan:
If you decide to try this recipe, please come back and let me know what you think!
And here are a few other recipes you might enjoy:
Homemade Peanut Brittle
Spinach Parmesan Balls (so incredibly good!)
Brownie Muddy Buddy recipe
***English Toffee recipe adapted from All Recipes.
Toffee is a hard candy made by cooking a sugar syrup with butter to the hard crack stage, 300–310°F (149–154°C), and then pouring it out to cool. It can have inclusions or not, and it can be made either very dense and hard or can be lightened by adding baking soda when the candy is almost done cooking .
Brittles and toffees accumulate small amounts of acid from the browning reactions that occur during cooking. This is one reason why the baking soda is added at the end of cooking. The soda reacts with the acid to make bubbles, and the syrup foams.
It's important while the toffee cooks to only stir it occasionally. Constant stirring can cause the toffee to crystallize and separate. For those of you that need to know exactly how often you should stir, I would suggest erring on the side of not stirring more than stirring.
Low and slow. Simmering the syrup for English toffee to the requisite 300°F temperature can (and should) be a slow process — up to 20 minutes or so. Don't hurry this gradual transformation; syrup that doesn't reach 300°F, or close to it, will make candy with timid flavor and chewy (not crunchy) texture.
Americanized toffee may include nuts, while a completely traditional British toffee will not. On the other hand, English toffee uses pure cane sugar, brown sugar, or molasses as its sweet base and always involves chocolate.
If the butterfat separates out then usually this is due to the mixture being either heated or cooled too quickly, which "shocks" the mixture and causes the fat to separate out. It can also be caused by the mixture being heated unevenly (if the pan has a thin base and has hot spots).
Made with just sugar and a little water, toffee is easy to make and is an easy introduction to the world of confectionary. This recipe includes a dash of vinegar which will help keep the colour of the toffee clear and bright and banish any cloudiness.
NOTE:[i] Most recipes recommend constant stirring from start to finish to prevent butter and sugar separation. Constant stirring will not hurt the mixture, but I have found it is unnecessary. You will stir the mixture a little as it cooks. When you stir, do it gently and slowly!
This should NOT be a non-stick pan, because non-stick pans allow crystals to be pulled into the cooking toffee and will cause the batch to crystallize. The heavy pan distributes heavy evenly so the toffee cooks without burning.
Here's how you know when the toffee is ready. Keep one of the almonds near the pan. It's your color cue. When the toffee is the color of the almond skin, it's done!
Cream of tartar is a white powder sold in the baking aisle that's commonly used to stabilize whipped egg whites in meringues and cakes, prevent sugar crystallization in candies and caramel, and act as the activating ingredient in baking powder.
As the toffee cools and the molten sugar crystals become solid again, they are attracted to the 'seed' forming new lumps of tiny crystals – hence the grainy texture. This can also happen if the toffee is stirred, or agitated, after it has begun to boil or on cooling (as happened with this pink-tinted toffee).
Undercooked toffee won't be anything more than a caramel sauce. But overcooked toffee will be just slightly crunchier (almost unrecognizably). So, always err on the side of over-cooking!
The hard-crack stage is the highest temperature you are likely to see specified in a candy recipe. At these temperatures, there is almost no water left in the syrup. Drop a little of the molten syrup in cold water and it will form hard, brittle threads that break when bent.
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Homemade Peanut Brittle
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