2 Tons of Toffee

I made two tons of toffee for Christmas this year. Well, maybe it was closer to about 10 lbs--but still, that's a lot of toffee. For many years my mom has bought homemade toffee at a local craft fair every fall, and I always look forward to getting my share in a Christmas care package. This year, to our dismay, there was no toffee. The Holidays looked grim, but then I had a wild idea. I could make my own toffee. Heck, I could even make enough to give as gifts. How hard could it be?

I began by looking up recipes online. Did you know that toffee contains only two basic ingredients? Minus the toppings, toffee is a simple mixture of sugar and butter. (No wonder it tastes so good.) Most recipes I found were very similar. Cook the butter and sugar until it looks toffee-colored and then pour it out and spread it with chocolate and nuts. It certainly sounded easy enough.

I knew from experience that candy making can be a finicky process. Temperatures, ratios, equipment, ingredients, relative humidity--everything has do be done exactly right or you end up with a big mess. I did all my research. I even watched a very helpful video on You Tube. But still, my first attempt at a very small batch of toffee was a flop. So I regrouped and tried another very small batch. Success.

Now I faced a dilemma. I didn't have the right kind of pot to make a full recipe. Toffee needs to be cooked in a large heavy pot. I don't have a large heavy pot. I have a small heavy pot, and I have a large flimsy pot, and I have a humongous 22 qt. pressure canning pot. So, I could make a whole bunch of small batches in my small heavy pot, or I could risk burned batches in my flimsy big pot, or I could make one giant humongous batch in my canning pot. What would you do? I quadrupled the recipe and made one ginormous batch of toffee. It was hilarious! I had to stand on a step-stool to be tall enough to comfortably stir the toffee while it was cooking. I felt just like an Oompa-Loompa. Check out the size of my toffee making pot compared to the small 2 qt. sauce pot next to it.


Because the pot was so large I had to rig my candy thermometer to the end of a beater so that it would reach to the bottom of the pot. Pretty tricky, huh. And you should have seen me try to carry a ten pound pot of molten hot sugar from the stove top to the table. My one pot of toffee filled up five cookie sheets and ended up making 34 small gift bags. Merry Christmas to ALL!