Toffee

Making toffee turned out to be quite an adventure. The first time we made it, we included butter among our ingredients and cooked it on too high a flame. The whole thing got caramelised, and on top of that we were moving too slowly and when we attempted to cut it, it had already hardened. Also it tasted more like a caramel candy than toffee.

The second time worked out a bit better; we had ditched the butter and cooked it on a much lower level of heat. It was easy to cut into and tasted really great but we cooked it just a tad bit too long and the texture turned out quite crumbly.

So, the moral of the story is that you have to move fast and keep a really good eye on the pot. A couple of more things; use a large metal tray to set the toffee and for the cooking part, use a really deep pot because the milk really rises when it bubbles. Also, people do add milo and cocoa powder to their toffees and you can add some if you want to.

Before we dive into the recipe we should also mention that this involves a lot of stirring. The last time we made it we used a timer and the total (almost continuous) stirring time was one hour and forty-five minutes.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ can sweetened condensed milk (we used double peach)
• 1 ½ can water (measured using the empty condensed milk can
• ½ kg sugar
• 1 ½ tsp. vanilla essence
• 1 tbsp. butter (for greasing the tray)

Instructions:

1. Rub butter on a large metal tray making sure that the entire surface is coated.
2. Pour the condensed milk, water and sugar in to a large deep pot.
3. Turn the heat on; keep it on low and just keep stirring. At this early stage it’s not going to stick to the bottom much so you can take little breaks.
4. As you continue, the mixture is going to bubble and change colour to a light brown. For us the colour became really evident at around the one-hour mark. At this point add in the vanilla essence.
5. Keep stirring, paying attention not to let anything stick to the bottom and sides of the pot, until the mixture thickens and sort of begins to form a ball shape. It’s not going to be a full on ball, but rather you’ll see it curve down at the sides. When you see that happening immediately take it off the heat.
6. Pour the mixture into the tray that you prepared and using a knife, a spatula or something of that sort, smoothen it. Do this really fast.
7. As soon as you smoothen it, using a sharp knife cut it into whatever shape you want, it’s usually squares. Do this quickly too as it’s going to harden really quickly. And there you have it, a batch of melt-in-your-mouth toffees.

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