My go-to favorite for a Christmas treat bag. It's hard to stop with just one piece.
Course Candy, Holiday, Christmas, Dessert
Prep Time 30 minutesminutes
Cook Time 30 minutesminutes
Ingredients
2cupspecans, or almonds, toasted (8.0 oz)I use a 50:50 mix of almonds and pecans
1cupsalted butter, 2 sticks (8.0 oz) if you use unsalted butter, add 1/2 tsp salt.
1 ½cupssugar (10.5 oz)
3tablespoonwater
1tablespoonlight corn syrup
1teaspoonbaking soda
2 ½ - 3cupschocolate chips (15 - 18 oz)semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped also works.
Instructions
Heat oven to 350 °F. Place nuts on an un-greased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Watch carefully starting at about 8 minutes as you want the nuts to be golden brown and not scorched. Set aside and let cool.
In a large deep saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Once melted, stir in the sugar, water, and corn syrup. Bring the mixture to a boil, and continue to boil gently without stirring until the mixture reaches 300 °F on a candy thermometer. It will go from light-colored to a darker amber quite quickly. Watch carefully as you don't want to burn the toffee.
While the toffee is cooking, line a baking sheet with parchment paper and grease lightly. Spread out half of the nuts and half of the chocolate on the baking sheet. If you want a thinner toffee, spread the nuts and chocolate further apart, thicker, keep them closer together. You can also use a parchment-lined and greased 9 x 9 or a 9 x 13 pan to try to keep the toffee more uniform.
Once the toffee has reached 300 °F, remove from the heat and stir in the baking soda. The toffee will bubble and fizz quite a bit which helps make it light and fluffy and easier to bite into. Pour the fizzing toffee syrup over the prepared chocolate and nuts and immediately sprinkle the remaining chocolate and then nuts over the hot toffee.
Wait 2-3 minutes for the chocolate to soften, then use the back of a spatula or a greased piece of parchment paper in your hand to gently press down on the chocolate and nuts to make sure everything adheres to the top of the toffee.
Let cool and for the chocolate to set, then break it into chunks. If you are like me, you will stick the whole cookie sheet in the fridge or outside in the cold to speed up the chocolate sets.
Notes
If you hide it from your family so you can use it for holiday gifts, this will keep for several weeks in an airtight container.My family prefers the toffee to be on the thinner side so I use the cookie sheet method and spread the chocolate and nuts to be just slightly larger than 9 x 13. You can toast the nuts ahead of time and store them in an air-tight container for a week or so. I usually toast up a whole bunch ahead of time so that I can make many batches in a day.