In honor of National English Toffee Day I am sharing my grandmother’s recipe for English Toffee!
Alice Belle’s World’s Best English Toffee Recipe
2 sticks of butter
1 1/3 cups white sugar
3 Tablespoons water
1/2 Cup nuts (optional)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 – 1 1/2 Cups chocolate chips (milk chocolate is best but semi-sweet is good also)
First, prepare a pan lined with buttered aluminum foil. I use a jelly roll pan.
Melt butter in a saucepan and add 1 1/3 cups sugar and 3 Tablespoons water and stir well.
Over medium high heat cook, stirring frequently, until it reaches 300
degrees. If the candy appears to separate (with a layer of melted
butter on top) stir vigorously to make it come back together again.
Watch CLOSELY at 285 degrees, since it cooks quickly and will
scorch at high temperatures.
To show you how quickly it cooks, at 285 degrees I was going to take a picture of it at precisely 300 degrees, but it went too quickly. It can usually go to 310 but any hotter and it will scorch!
At 300 degrees remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract. Stir in nuts if using (or you can sprinkle on top of chocolate).
Carefully pour toffee into prepared pan smoothing to desired thickness and let set about a minute. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top.
Wait about three minutes until chocolate chips are soft and melted from the heat of the toffee. Smooth chocolate across the top of the toffee.
Place in refrigerator until hard. Peel aluminum foil from back of toffee and break into pieces!
Happy National English Toffee Day!
I know this is about two years late, but I found this the other day. It is a great recipe, but I found I liked it better with two additions. The first is a teaspoon of baking soda mixed in just before pouring. The other was a little salt either sprinkled on the toffee before covering in chocolate, or (my favorite) broken pretzel sticks pressed into the melted chocolate.
Made this yesterday, so awesome! All I had were semi-sweet chocolate chips but it turned out wonderful anyway. Thanks 🙂
Thanks so much for this great, and fairly easy, recipe. I am adding it to gift baskets I am making for Christmas. I will also be adding the link to my blog. I will come back with the address when I do.
I know this is over 9 months since you posted this, but I think it sounds yummy. Plus, I admit the name of the recipe caught my eye. I have my own little Alice Belle. So it was like, wow that’s so cool! {Random moment over} We are going to have to make some of this because of the name alone.
Just finished making this–delicious! After tasting it, I made one change–sprinkled some salt on the finished product. Next time I would consider adding salt or using salted butter. And there will certainly be a next time. 🙂
Now we are on our way to making the Fudge Recipe…Looks so easy and good..LOL
I just found this, what a wonderful, yummy and terrific recipe…I am writing after just eating the first piece…GREAT !!!
Thank you !!
I wish I’d read this sooner, so I could have celebrated on the proper day. But then again, I was too busy doing work stuff that day.
True story: when in high school, I was helping a friend make toffee (family tradition at her house). We were stirring the toffee with a rubber spatula. It seemed like the spatula was getting shorter, but we brushed it off as our imagination. Only – guess what! – it WAS getting shorter, because it was melting into the molten sugar-butter-etc mix! We found pieces of white stuff in our toffee. We ate around it… :^O
Made this with my hubby yesterday … DELICIOUS!!! We can’t stop eating it!!
MMMMMM…looks yummy. Now that’s what I call a holiday!
this is delicious. Yum! Yum!
I saw this on tip junkie last night and my girls and I just made some, it is in the fridge right now
Oh my goodness! I went over and got your recipe from Tip Junkie….it turned out fabulous! Huge problem now….I can NOT stop eating. ACK! They are sooo delicious – thanks for sharing the recipe. I’ve found my new sinful indulgence!!!
Oh yum! I made toffee for my Xmas cookie trays this year and it was wonderfulicious. I had the same candy thermometer that you show in the pics, but the next time I used it, it got all steamed up inside and I couldn’t keep track of where the line was ~ it was ruined. Does yours do that?
Looks good.