A couple of weeks ago I remembered a home-made lolly from my youth called ‘toffees’. I recalled buying them at church and school fetes, but hadn’t had one for decades.
A quick google search later and KLS had found a recipe. It was time to try and recreate this sweet from my youth!
The ingredients are simple: sugar, water, vinegar and cream of tartar. The process of cooking isn’t too difficult either: just mix it together and cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes:
The above shows our first attempt. When it’s ready we poured it into cupcake cups:
And after adding a few sprinkles we were done:
Not bad for our first attempt are they? They tasted great but there was a problem: they were incredibly sticky! As in you could barely open your mouth when you bit one. To be honest, they were scary to eat!
A second issue was that they were impossible to get out of the cupcake cups, and eating one included a good mouthful of paper as well. 🙂
Kristin knew the cream of tartar was the culprit and less would result in a harder toffee. It was time for round two! This time she let the mix boil slightly longer until it turned golden, and then when we poured it we used silicon cups as well:
These were much more successful! Not as sticky with a better taste. The one in the top left was sublime since KLS topped it with salt! As a bonus they came out of the silicon mold perfectly:
Alas there was still one issue: they were too big! This made them difficult to eat since they were too hard to bite through and a bit too large in the mouth. It was time for further refinement…
A week later we had secured more sugar and a new set of smaller molds, and we tried again. Golden brown boil, smaller silicon molds, salt on top:
Finally, we had crafter perfection! These are astonishingly good and 100% the taste of my youth.
A great success! Even though they’re basically just sugar, they taste like salted caramels. Next time you visit, we’ll make you some 🙂
Toffees were the best thing about school fetes. Word soon spread as to which stall had the biggest/cheapest. How did we ever eat multiples? Toffee apples were good, too. Apart from the odd lucky dip, I can’t remember spending my precious coins on anything else.
I made toffees for many fetes. Some were successful and others were forgettable. I also made a variety of other sweets like coconut ice, sherbet cones and rocky road. One year I had a go at Toffee apples never again ! It was all good and I loved working at the fetes.