Classic Milk (or Dark) Chocolate Toffee
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Here is recipe for classic milk or dark chocolate toffee, the perfect gift for the person in your life with a sweet tooth. This toffee melts in your mouth and is buttery, sandy-textured and delicious. Below you will find step-by-step instructions as well as video guidance:
This recipe, submitted by my friend Laura Daley, won The Philadelphia Bulletin’s 2007 “Annual Edible Gift Recipe Contest.” It’s buttery and chocolaty, sweet and salty, nutty, and, well, just plain addictive.
There is one trick to making this recipe: cooking the sugar until it reaches the hard-ball stage or, in my experience, until it gets just beyond the hard-ball stage.
What is the hard-ball stage?
The hard-ball stage refers to the stage sugar reaches when it is heated to 250º – 266ºF (121 – 130ºC), but for this recipe you’ll want to cook it a little longer.
You, of course, can use a candy thermometer to test for this stage, but Laura uses a different method: she has you drop a small spoonful of the cooked sugar into a glass of cold water. If the syrup forms a ball — and if you press it between your fingers and it holds its shape — the sugar is in the hard-ball stage.
If you are comfortable cooking sugar and gauging this sort of stage, feel proud — it’s not easy. The more I make this toffee, the more I find myself relying on my Thermapen — so fast and so accurate — to assess when the sugar-butter mixture is done. I also am finding that cooking the sugar a bit beyond the hard-ball stage, more to like 285ºF-290ºF, is best.
Note: the texture of this finished toffee is almost sandy — it melts in your mouth as opposed to sticks to your molars. It doesn’t snap sharply when it breaks, but rather crumbles. I find the texture to be quite nice, but if you are looking for more of that crisp, snappy caramel texture, you should cook your butter-sugar mixture till it gets beyond 300ºF.
Chill It
There is one other critical step to ensuring this toffee turns out well for you: chill the assembled toffee in the fridge for at least two hours before breaking it into chards. Chilling it allows the butter-sugar layer to firm up and solidify. Once it is solid, you can break it into shards and …
…Gift It
This toffee, as Laura notes in the recipe, makes a great gift for the holidays. Several years ago, I purchased a case of 100 brown stationery boxes from Uline. Although this large case of boxes takes up nearly half our storage space in the basement, every holiday season I am so happy to have these clear-top boxes on hand.
I have packaged biscotti and chocolate truffles in them for the past two years, and now I will pack Daley Toffee in them as well. For a nice presentation, use parchment paper as a base inside the box, wrap the box with a ribbon, and tie on a simple tag.
How to Make Toffee: A Step-by-Step Guide
Sprinkle ground pecans into a buttered 9×9-inch pan. I love this USA Pan:
Bring butter, sugar, water, and vanilla to a simmer in a saucepan stovetop:
Have your Thermapen or candy thermometer nearby. You want to remove the mixture when it reaches 285ºF – 290ºF or when it looks caramel-colored. Reference the video for guidance. Pour it over your prepared pan:
Let stand 2 minutes; then sprinkle chocolate chips over top. Let stand another 2 minutes; then spread into an even layer:
You can use dark or milk chocolate here — whatever you like best:
Sprinkle more ground pecans over top and a pinch of sea salt if you wish:
Transfer to the fridge for at least 2 hours before turning the toffee out onto a sheet of parchment paper and breaking it into shards.
Classic Milk (or Dark) Chocolate Toffee
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 1 8×8-inch pan
Description
This recipe comes from my friend Laura Daley, whose recipe won The Philadelphia Bulletin’s holiday baking contest in 2007.
Laura’s notes: This recipe makes a great holiday gift for those with a sweet tooth! It keeps up to 2 weeks if you put it in an airtight container.
Chocolate: I’ve used both semi-sweet (46% cacao) and dark chocolate (74% cacao), and I like both. Obviously, when semi-sweet chocolate is used, the toffee comes out sweeter.
Ingredients
- butter for greasing
- 2/3 cup (72 g) ground pecans (or nut of your choice)
- 1 cup (226 g) salted butter
- 1 cup (218 g) sugar
- 3 tablespoons (40 g) water
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup (140 g) premium milk chocolate or dark chocolate, see notes above
- Sea salt, optional
Instructions
- Grease a 9×9-inch pan. Put 1/3 cup of the nuts in the pan.
- Cook butter, sugar, water, and vanilla over medium heat stirring occasionally until golden brown — you want the sugar to get just past the hard-ball stage or until it reaches: 285º – 290ºF (140 – 143ºC). You can use a candy thermometer or better a Thermapen to test for this stage or you can drop a small spoonful of the cooked sugar into a glass of cold water. If the syrup forms a ball, the sugar is in the hard-ball stage.
- Pour the cooked butter/sugar mixture over the nuts.
- Wait 2 minutes; then put the chocolate on top. Wait 2 more minutes; then spread the chocolate evenly over top — I use the back of a spoon. Sprinkle the remaining nuts on top. Sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt if you wish. Transfer the pan to the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours.
- When the toffee has completely cooled, break it into pieces. Store in an airtight container.
NOTE: You can also use an 8×13-inch pan if you’d prefer a thinner version — in which case increase nuts to 1 cup.
- Category: Candy
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: toffee, milk, chocolate, hard-ball stage
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
11 Comments on “Classic Milk (or Dark) Chocolate Toffee”
Hi 🙂 I just found your blog while i was browsing. Everything sounds so delicious!
Hi Ali! I just made these toffees for the girls x-mas party/cookie exchange. Thanks for the great recipe! I haven’t cut them yet so hope they turn out good! The ingredients were simple and…like you always say…It was sooo easy to made them!!
Hugs!
not the finest fin, the funniest fin! thanks Miina. can’t wait to see you.
xo
Hi Ali,
Did you use dark or milk chocolate? I know the recipe calls for milk chocolate, but it looked somewhat dark in the pictures. Thanks!
Natalie, hi. I used milk chocolate only because it was the first time I made the recipe and wanted to follow the instructions without changing anything the first time around. You could definitely use dark chocolate. In fact, with my recent taking to dark chocolate, I’m sure that’s what I will use in the future. Milk chocolate works just fine, however, if that’s what you like. Good Luck!
I used this recipe today and tried toffee for the first time with help from my 15-month-old daughter. 🙂 The result astes great, but the consistency of the toffee seems a little off…it is crumbly and little grainy. I used a thermapen and cooked it until it read 265 degrees (for awhile…it almost seemed to stall-out temp-wise, but maybe I just needed to be more patient) and had reached the hard ball stage from my cold water test. It was golden and I was worried I had overcooked it, but I think maybe I undercooked it? Not sure. Please advise. 🙂 It was a fun adventure to try, and like I said, it tastes delicious, but I’m going to have to try it again to feel like I’ve mastered it. Thank you for your careful attention to testing and fine-tuning!
Hi Susanna! I am in the process of revisiting this recipe and should be able to advise more tomorrow … i never got a chance to test the batch of toffee I made today.
I cooked mine to 285ºF today; then stuck it in the fridge, but I haven’t broken it into chards yet. Did you chill yours? Or let it harden at room temperature? I think you likely undercooked it, but I again, I will report back more tomorrow.
Great you have a Thermapen — a reliable thermometer is so key with these sorts of recipes!
Susanna, hello! Question, did you refrigerate the toffee before breaking it into shards?
I just broke the batch I made yesterday into shards and took a few tastes: the texture definitely is sandy, and this is how I remember it always being. But if you don’t like this texture, I think the key next time will be cooking the sugar longer. I actually cooked my sugar-butter mixture to 290ºF (realized this after watching my video, which I’m in the process of getting together to post), so I think for a really crisp toffee, you’d have to cook it past 300ºF.
I am in the process of updating this recipe with some more notes, so I will update the recipe very soon! Thank you for being understanding. It’s frustrating when things don’t turn out well. Glad you had some good company with you nonetheless 🙂 🙂 🙂