English Toffee

Bertha C.'s Note:

An easy candy favorite at Christmas time.

• Total Time: 25 mins
• Prep Time: 5 mins
• Cook Time: 20 mins

Ingredients:

Yield: 1 pound

• 1 cup butter (only real butter can be used in this recipe)
• 1 cup sugar
• ¼ cup water
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 3 semi-sweet chocolate baking squares or ½ cup chocolate chips
• 1 cup coarsely broken pecans

Directions:

1. In heavy saucepan, combine butter, sugar, water, and salt.
2. Cook to hard-crack stage (300°F) stirring constantly and watching carefully.
3. Immediately pour into ungreased 13"x9" pan.
4. Cool until hard.
5. Melt chocolate over hot, but not boiling water.
6. Spread over toffee; sprinkle with nuts, pressing them into chocolate.
7. Let stand 2-3 hours or chill 30 minutes.
8. Break into bite-size pieces.

Reviews

[Maddison]

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.

[CindyMarie]

This is almost the same as the toffee I've been making for years... and the requests for it grow each year! My recipe is from Better Crocker's Cookbook and does not include salt. I have doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled the recipe and it works fine as long as you use the a large enough pan when cooking. Like other reviewers, I sprinkle chocolate chips directly on the warm toffee. Until you are very adept at doing this, I recommend only making a double batch at a time because you have to work very quickly to pour and spread the toffee and top and with chocolate. If the chocolate chips do not melt completely, you can put in a 200 degree oven for a minute.

[Lvs2Cook]

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!