Toffee might just be the best food to come out of England, along with fish 🐟 and chips. It’s easily my most favorite candy 🍭. I love Almond Roca, Heath bars (apparently the original toffee 👀), See’s and Trader Joe’s toffee. I can't get enough of the stuff, so I decided to make some myself – not unlike a mad Mr. Willy Wonka himself 🎩!
My first attempt was a disaster. In hindsight it was a foolish endeavor, but while our kitchen was out of commission, I tried using the single burner electric stove we had come to rely on for reheating leftovers to make the notoriously finicky caramel. Even though I used a candy thermometer, the heat of the stove was just too inconsistent and spotty. The butter and sugar separated, the sugar never fully dissolved, and the consistency was just too runny, so it never set to that proper toffee crunch. After much frustration and a few hacks to save it from complete ruin, it was still edible and tasted fine, but the disappointing texture made this a far cry from my favorite, or even closely resembling, toffee.
Kitchen defeats always hit hard, but pushing aside all doubts and borrowing Mom’s kitchen, made attempt #2 a resounding success. Without even using a thermometer or fiddling with heat settings, I achieved the impeccably smooth and homogenous butter-sugar dream known as toffee. I knew even before pouring it out of the pan that this was going to have that beautiful signature crack. With the base of the perfect toffee, the melted chocolate and roasted almond toppings completed the confection to satisfy the standards of a connoisseur, ie: Me.
I recently featured these babies in a fall-themed food board for a girls’ Halloween night, along with Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls, Cinnamon Vanilla Candied Almonds, and Sweet and Spicy Roasted Pecans, and they were (all) a hit. They’re so tasty and such an impressive presentation that people might mistake them for being store-bought. The most glowing compliment that night was “these remind me of the toffee from See’s;” almost brought a tear to my eye 🥲.
