{"id":582,"date":"2016-09-12T06:21:52","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T10:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/practicalbits.com\/?p=582"},"modified":"2016-09-09T21:44:23","modified_gmt":"2016-09-10T01:44:23","slug":"super-easy-toffee-recipe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/?p=582","title":{"rendered":"Super Easy Toffee Recipe"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a sweet tooth – not enormous, but bad enough that I have some childhood cavities to pay for it. I’m also a card carrying member of the Why Buy It If You Could Make It Yourself club, but I’ve always shied away from making candy – all the fuss with boiling sugar, combined with the necessity of being brave enough to repeatedly drip blobs of molten sugar into water so you can squish it – no thanks.<\/p>\n

Except for toffee. The siren song of rich, buttery crunchiness draws me in so I gaze longingly at the recipes, only to be irritatingly jolted back to reality by the words “candy thermometer”.<\/p>\n

No more. I found a recipe that relies on nothing but pure guts and your own judgement. Wanna cook sugar and butter together until your eyeballs must judge what might or might not be a temperature around 248 degrees? Sure!<\/p>\n

\"Homemade<\/a><\/p>\n

Basic English Toffee<\/strong><\/p>\n

1 cup granulated sugar
\n1 cup butter
\n1\/4 tsp salt
\n1\/2 tsp vanilla
\n1 tsp baking soda (optional)<\/p>\n

Equipment:
\nbaking sheet lined with parchment OR oiled well
\npot
\nstirring utensil (wooden or silicone recommended)<\/p>\n

Prep your baking sheet. If you leave it in the oven at 200 degrees, it buys you a little spreading time.<\/p>\n

Melt butter and sugar together in your pot over medium heat. Stir constantly, until mixture is a medium caramel brown (about 15 minutes). Stir in salt and vanilla. If desired, you can stir the baking soda in at the end for a slightly more shattering texture.<\/p>\n

Pour mixture onto baking sheet and spread out evenly with spatula. DO NOT TOUCH HOT MIXTURE WITH YOUR HANDS. Allow to cool before breaking into bite-size pieces.<\/p>\n

OPTIONAL CHANGES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nuts<\/em>: Chop 2 cups of nuts (pecans or almonds are good), toast lightly. Scatter over baking sheet. Spread toffee mixture over nuts, then cool.<\/p>\n

Pretzels<\/em>: Break up 2 cups of pretzels into small pieces. You can scatter them over the baking sheet like the nuts, or you can scatter them over the top after spreading the toffee.<\/p>\n

Chocolate<\/em>: You can do this with either of the mix-ins – Take a couple handfuls of chocolate chips and scatter them over the toffee after you’ve spread it out. Let it sit for about five minutes and allow the residual heat to melt the chips, then take a spatula and spread the chocolate over the toffee. You’ll need to move the toffee into the refrigerator to cool or the chocolate will not re-solidify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a sweet tooth – not enormous, but bad enough that I have some childhood cavities to pay for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/practicalbits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}