Heritage Home | Family Genealogy | Recipes Home   Desserts, Cakes, Cookies & Pies   Vickie's English Toffee Toffee is a confection made by boiling molasses or sugar into a hard cracked candy. The sugar is mixed with butter, but there are several recipes that include other ingredients, such as vanilla and flour.   According to Wikipedia: A popular variant in the US is English toffee, which is a very buttery toffee often made with almonds. It is available in both chewy and hard versions; there is some debate as to which is the traditional English style and which is an Americanized version. A popular presentation of English toffee is covered in chocolate and almond pieces.   Preparation Time: About 1 hour Serves: 24   Ingredients: 1 cup sugar 2 sticks of margarine or butter 2 tblspn water 1 tspn vanilla 6 oz. milk chocolate chips ½ cup chopped pecans Candy thermometer   Directions: Use a large sauce pan (it's important you use a large pan as the butter/sugar mix will double in size as it melts). Find the setting on your stove between Low and Medium. Place the butter into the pot with the water and begin to melt the butter. When the butter has put a good covering over the bottom of the pot, add the cup of sugar. Melting the butter slowly will ensure the sugar melts evenly and properly dissolves. Continually stir the mixture as it melts. Once all the butter has melted, turn the heat up to medium. Make sure you keep stirring as the mixture boils. Once the water has boiled off, the mixture will collapse and thicken. The temperature will also start to rise again. Remove the mixture from the heat once the mixture passes 300°F (150°C) and before it reaches 320°F (160°C). To create toffee, heat the mixture until it reaches the hard crack stage (300°F / 150°C). If you don't allow the sugar to reach this temperature before cooling, the texture will be different.   When the correct temperature has been reached, remove the pot from the heat and add in the vanilla and stir vigorously. Be cautious, the vanilla might bubble and splash instantly. Spray a cookie sheet with Pam spray and pour the toffee onto the tray. Measure the milk chocolate and sprinkle the chips evenly over the toffee while it's still hot. Wait 2 minutes for the chips to become soft and shiny. Using a mixing spatula spread the chocolate over the toffee.   Sprinkle the chopped pecans over the chocolate evenly. Gently push the nuts into the chocolate to ensure they don't fall off when the toffee is cut. Let the toffee cool for about twenty minutes until the sheet pan returns to room temperature. Slip the pan into the refrigerator to cool down and set for at least thirty minutes. Remove from the refrigerator and peel the toffee from the baking mat or parchment paper. Working quickly so the chocolate doesn't melt too much, break the toffee into chunks of the desired size and place into an airtight container. Because the chocolate isn't tempered, this English toffee should be stored in the refrigerator to keep the chocolate from melting if the room gets warm. During the breaking of the toffee, you'll lose quite a few almond pieces, but don't worry, this is normal.   Alternatives: You can use semi-sweet chocolate instead of milk chocolate. You can use any kind of nut to decorate the top of the chocolate. Cashews work really well. Pecans what we used in our first batch (pictured above). Almonds are the traditional nut. Peanuts Macadamias add a flair to toffee.

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