Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Toffee!! Yay!!

Some of you might remember my post about my big toffee/taffy failure where I ended up with fudge! Well I must admit not once, not twice, not even thrice, but four times now have I ended up with fudge when I wanted toffee! I was sure I just hadn't heated the sugar enough the first two times, so for the third attempt I bought a candy thermometer but had the same problem! Then I decided pulling taffy was too complicated so I went with simple poured nut toffee - but the process of stirring in the nuts once again resulted in fudge. I guess I just wasn't careful enough not to get any sugar crystals in the mix (one sugar crystal causes the whole batch to re crystalize and turn into fudge). So for my 5th attempt I decided I wasn't even going to stir at all - just boil then pour! And finally.... toffee! And it's good.... sooooo good! So after this success will I be trying again - most definitely! I'll work my way up to nut toffee but I'm going to take things slowly!

Here's the recipe:

1 1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup boiling water
Pinch baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
30g butter
1/2 cup cream (I used whipping cream)

1. Put first 4 ingredients in heavy based saucepan (which I don't have so just used a normal one) and put on stove over a low heat stirring constantly until sugar dissolves and mixture is boiling (for me it happened in that order).
2. When boiling put the lid on the pan for 3 minutes to let the sugar crystals dissolve on the side of the pan.
3. Now put your candy thermeter in, I turned the heat up a little but it was still pretty low, and let it boil till 236 F.
4. Gradually add cut up butter alternating with cream, don't let the temperature drop below 225 F.
5. Leave to boil till reach 256 F - took about 10 minutes again I turned it up a little but it was still only low - moderate heat.
6. When reaches 256 pour into buttered pan.
7. Let cool a bit then mark into squares.
8. When cold cut into squares.
9. I then dipped in icing sugar and wrapped in greaseproof paper.

Dissolving the sugar.



The boiling sugar syrup.



Cream and butter just been added - yum!



The poured toffee cooling.



Cutting into squares - a very tiring job!



After coating them in icing sugar I found a really good way off getting rid of the excess icing sugar was to put them all in the sieve.



I wrapped up around 90 little toffee! Then promptly upwrapped two and ate them... yum!



xxx
Mindy

2 comments:

amy said...

wow they look great!
do you stir the cream and butter in?

I probably can't justify making these as they have very little nutritional value (cupcakes at least have eggs and as a vegetarian I need lots of eggs ;-) )

Mindy said...

No you don't even stir the butter and cream in just add it little by little - it gets mixed in really well by the vigorous bubbles from the boiling.