Classic Milk (or Dark) Chocolate Toffee

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.

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