English Toffee

An absolutely excellent recipe from my friend, Pat Myser. The first time I made it, it didn’t taste like hers. So she graciously came over for a hands-on lesson for perfection. It is simply the best toffee I have ever eaten.

2  cups  brown sugar
2  cups  butter (no substitutes)
Pecans, raw almonds, and raw cashews
Chunk of white chocolate*
Chunk of milk chocolate (Hershey or Ghirardelli)

Butter two 8” square pans. Line the bottoms, one with whole raw almonds and the other with whole raw cashews. Chop up the pecans and the chocolates by hand.

Using a heavy frying pan, combine butter and brown sugar over medium heat. Stir constantly until it forms a hard crack. Candy thermometers are usually not accurate, so have a small dish of very cold ice water standing by. As the mixture starts to turn a light golden brown, drop a little mixture into the cold water. It should get hard immediately, with a slight cracking sound. Taste test it. This candy will go quickly from just right to burned, so work fast.

As soon as it is done, immediately pour half into each prepared pan, on top of the nuts. Immediately put the chopped milk chocolate over the pan with almonds; the white chocolate over the pan of cashews. The chocolate will melt with the heat of the candy, and adhere to the toffee. Spread as it
melts, over the tops of each pan. Top the milk chocolate with chopped pecans, leaving the white chocolate as is.

Cool at room temperature. Snap out of the pans and chop into pieces.
Store in metal cookie tins.  Do not freeze.

Cooking Tip: *Use white chocolate in block form for this recipe, not the chips in a bag. Block white chocolate has less additives, and better results.