So I’ve found recently that I really can’t play for toffee. This being the case, and partly reacting to suggestions from helpful Chiffers, I decided to give up and …
… make toffee!
But it’s not as easy as one might think. The recipe I had was this one:
It’s not the most helpful of recipes, because it doesn’t tell you how long to boil the stuff for, or what you might expect to happen when you do etc. So, when I poured it out into my tray (I was using a baking tray) it didn’t set. I also don’t have a sugar thermometer, which I think doesn’t help. And I hadn’t measured the ingredients (apart from the sugar, the butter and the water). Anny-hoo … after an hour and it still being a sludgy looking mixture in the bottom of the tray, I decided to put it back in the saucepan and re-heat it.
My original recipe said not to stir it. It seemed quite emphatic. But, since I’d failed with its instructions, I decided that I would stir it quite frequently while I was re-heating it. This time, also, I tested it quite a few times, not only with a saucer, previously put into the fridge (in the way that you would do for jams or marmalade) but also with a glass of iced water, dropping bits in and seeing if they formed strings.
It’s been in the tray now for about half an hour, is still very hot, but, yay! , it’s starting to set. Now I need to catch it before it sets fully and mark it up into squares …
We rarely have butter* around the house, so I wonder how caramels, toffees, and other confections would turn out with another fat/oil. Walnut oil might be interesting.
*Oddly enough we do have a half tub of gee in the frig right now.
We left it to set properly overnight, which I’m delighted to say that it seems to have done. I shall, of course, post some pictures of my near-miraculous achievement (no-one has ever made toffee quite like this ) and then … there will be toffee.
It does, doesn’t it? It was pick-upable though. Sort of like softish caramel, rather than toffee. I’m going to have another go when I’ve got a sugar thermometer. Do you think I didn’t boil it for long enough?
Well, I found the reason not to stir it here. Short story, you don’t want to seed crystals of a saturated solution while it is cooling. Stirring would only be a problem if the heat was removed and the solution was cooling (causing a supersaturated solution), so stirring it while re heating it would have been fine. http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/candy/sugar.html
To create toffee, we will basically heat sugar and butter until the sugar 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. For example, if heated to the soft crack stage (the temperature range just below hard crack), the candy would be more like a butterscotch than a brittle, crunchy toffee. (In some parts of the world, this is also considered a toffee, but it’s not what comes to mind when I hear the word.) If the sugar is heated beyond 320°F (160°C), then it might not retain its solid form and turn into liquid caramel over time.
Seems like the more water that is driven off the higher the boiling point is, and the harder the cooled solution becomes. When the sugar molecules are damaged by oxidation, this properties starts to deteriorate as impurities accumulate. So if it tasted bitter or burned It may have been over cooked, but since you monitored it, most likely it was under cooked.
… but then most of my candy attempts were disasters.
Firstly, there is no bitterness at all. It tastes fine. So I didn’t burn it at least. I must have under-cooked it. I’ll look up that article. I wonder if it’s because I had to re-heat it? Would it have been OK if I had kept it on the heat the first time and boiled it long enough to get to the hard crack stage? The thing that confused me though, was that a lot of the recipes seem to suggest that the only thing necessary is for it to get to the right temperature, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. You seem to have to keep it at that temperature for quite a while or it won’t set.
I’ll keep reading. I can’t make any more for a while - after all, I’ve got to get through this lot first …
Well, I may be able to help you. I make english toffee professionally, well, my version of it (pecan toffee), and I learned a few things along the way.
Get a candy thermometer, pronto. You can actually use one of those excellent meat probes that have a wire in them, and connect to a digital timer/thermometer. I have one that sits on a clip, and that’s what I use when making candy. More predictable, and there’s no glass to break. You just have to have enough of the probe in the mixture while cooking, to get a proper reading.
Never use anything but real butter when making toffee, caramel, or anything that calls for butter. Cheap candies are made with hydrogenated oils, tropical oils, and other horrendous things that don’t taste right, so why would you want your candy to taste like the cheap stuff?
Yes, you can and should stir the toffee, depending on the recipe. The one I use calls for three ingredients to make the actual toffee - butter, sugar and salt. In my recipe, you absolutely must stir it or you will burn it.
Many recipes that call for milk, cream or butter to be added at the beginning of cooking will ask you to stir in order to create the nice browning and caramelization and to prevent burning, because of all the dairy solids in the mix. You also don’t want to start the heat too high - start at about medium heat. Let the heat gradually build on its own, again so the milk solids don’t burn. Because of the gradual rise in temp, you’ll be stirring a lot.
On temperatures - if you want a crunchy toffee, you will need to go to around 298-303°F to get the right consistency, which is called hard-crack stage. This is why thermometers are important in candy making - if you are off by 5 degrees, your candy will be the wrong texture at the end.
A great source of candy recipes come from the CIA - Culinary Institute of America. Here are some links to start:
I also think I’ve worked out an additional thing about the temperature for myself. What I didn’t realise is that the temperature itself is the thing. I thought I must be at or near the right temperature because it was as hot as it would go. But I hadn’t twigged that, once the right amount of the water has boiled off, the temperature will rise in any case, and can go much hotter than at the stage where most of the boiling is being done by water. So achieving the right temperature and boiling it for the right length of time are actually inextricably linked.
Yikes! That range of temps will go from soft to medium to almost hard crack. When doing a new recipe that you are unfamiliar with, I usually check it against two or three others to see if I get similar information, and better yet, get the recipe from a trusted source.
Well, what really happens is that the more water that is boiled off, the higher the temperature will go. At the same time, something called the Malliard process is going on when making toffee or anything caramel-tasting - this is the actual thing that makes the caramel flavor. This process needs to be given time to develop color and flavor, so you have a complex, rich tasting caramel/toffee… hence the “boil for 7 minutes at 225°F” instruction in some recipes. You can tell if you’ve gone to your ending temperature too quickly if the result looks a little too “blond”, and not a nice medium brown color. You can also see if you went too far if the color is more of a coffee, which is right on the edge of burnt.
And all of this of course has to do with whistles, right??
When I take breaks from cooking, I take out my Oz whistle in D and play for a bit. The acoustics in my candy kitchen are fun for that!
, it’s starting to set. Now I need to catch it before it sets fully and mark it up into squares …
) and then … there will be toffee.
