In amongst the various new desserts and confections we’ve had coming out, we decided to add some old-school confections. We have some experiments in cherry cordials, liquor cordials and chew caramels going. One definite success we’ve had is with a good toffee.
Toffees are another variation on cooked sugar confections, with the temperature cooked high enough, and the fat/liquid content kept low enough that the final product is a hard candy, as opposed to a soft or firm chew. Ours is cream based, and uses lots, I mean LOTS of butter. We also add almonds at the end. We’ve tried both slivered and sliced (sliced shown here), and so far both work. Slivered might end up with a better bite/mouth feel though.
Did I mention there’s a lot of butter? (Considering this bakery, that should come as no surprise- we like our butter)
Notice the thermocouple probe being supported by the yardstick- you want to keep the mass well mixed so you avoid being faked out by a hot spot and pulling the confection too early. With a well stirred toffee it’s pretty easy. With pate du fruits and chew caramels, placement of the thermometer can be important, as can calibration. If the mass isn’t mixed well enough, or the placement is at the edge where the temperatures tend to be higher, or your thermometer/thermocouple is off-calibration, you can get a false read on your target temperature. If this happens, you end up with a confection that doesn’t set up right (if at all). It’s a common mistake when first learning to do these kinds of confections. Luckily, assuming you erred on the side of pulling to early, you can at least recover an interesting sauce or jelly out of the batch (you can’t really try to cook it further after you find it’s not setting up).
Besides the issue of accurate batch temperature measurement, you have to keep mass moving so that there isn’t any scorching or burning. What this means is you end up constantly stirring a continually thickening mass (like most bakery work, sugar confections are great for forearm and hand strength), and trust me, you don’t want to accidentally splash (sugar burns are not nice). Pate du fruits are very each to scorch, due to the fruit puree. Caramels aren’t quite as easy to scorch due to the high burn point, but it is possible (and in some cases, desirable).
In the photos above, you can see how the mass of cream, sugar and butter ranges from the light yellow of melted butter to the darkening brown tones as the sugar caramelizes, water boils out (you reach a series of boil points based on proportion of water, with jumps in temperature as the amount of water decreases…the joys of thermodynamics). The butter fat browns some as well, and there is likely a little caramelizing of the dairy proteins. Once we hit the target temperature, we pour in almonds, mix and then pour the mass on our marble slab (which happens to actually be granite). Some quick pre-cut impressions are made, and then it’s allowed to set up and cool.
After cooling, the pre-cut pieces are further broken or cut to size, and any slabs left are taken to be coated with chocolate. The small broken scraps tend to disappear after a call of ‘Scraps! Anyone want a taste?’
From there, it’s a matter of breaking up the coated slabs and packaging them.
So…we now have toffee. Buttery, tasty, toffee.
Have a great Friday everyone!
