What Is Toffee?
Everything you need to know about this sweet, crunchy, buttery confection, including how to make it.
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By Layla Khoury-Hanold for Food Network Kitchen
Layla Khoury-Hanold is a contributor at Food Network.
You may know and love toffee as a classic holiday sweet or part of the filling of your favorite candy bar. But what exactly is toffee? For more info, we consulted Christy Graves, vice president of Griff's Toffee, a family-owned company that makes English-style toffee.
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What Is Toffee?
Toffee is a sweet, buttery confection made by cooking butter and sugar together to a specific temperature and letting it cool until it reaches a crisp, crunchy texture.
“Toffee is sweet and buttery, sometimes sticky and always crunchy! It can be a blank canvas for adding nuts or dried fruit. It can be enrobed—covered in chocolate—to create an even more complete flavor profile,” Graves says.
How Do You Make Toffee?
“Making toffee is almost like a science experiment. It can be quite tricky and requires very precise measurements and temperatures,” Graves says. Like making any candy or even baked goods, you need to follow directions closely to make toffee at home. “Missing the exact amounts, times and temperatures can end in disaster," adds Graves. "The success of a toffee recipe can even vary with the level of humidity in your kitchen.”
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How to Make Toffee, Step-By-Step
Here, Graves' general, step-by-step process for making toffee at home.
Step one: Heat the butter and sugar. Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Using a heat-resistant spatula, stir in sugar and a pinch of kosher salt and bring to a full boil; the mixture should be bubbling.
Step two: Cook the toffee. Continue to boil the mixture, stirring occasionally to ensure even caramelization, until a candy thermometer registers 310 degrees. Remove from the heat and stir in vanilla, if desired.
Step three: Spread the toffee. Pour the liquid toffee on a lightly buttered rimmed baking sheet (or line baking sheet with a Silpat baking liner) and quickly spread it into a thin layer using a heat-resistant spatula. Allow it to cool and set.
Step four: Make the toffee pieces. Break the hard layer of toffee candy into bite-sized pieces. The toffee can be served as is or enrobed in chocolate and sprinkled with nuts to finish.
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What Is Toffee Sauce?
Toffee sauce is made by cooking sugar and butter together and stirring in heavy cream at the end. It’s used to finish the classic English dessert Sticky Toffee Pudding (pictured above), and it can also be served as a topping for ice cream, cake, cheesecake or other desserts.
Toffee vs Caramel vs Butterscotch
“Toffee varies from caramel and butterscotch in its ingredients, cooking process and ultimately its final texture. The scientific term for the final temperature stage of toffee is 'hard crack,' while caramel and butterscotch are often cooked to 'soft crack,'” Graves says.
Caramel is often made with cream, giving it a softer texture and milder flavor. “Caramel is generally chewier and a bit stickier than toffee, which is traditionally hard and crunchy,” she adds.
Toffee Recipes
Armando Rafael
This riff on traditional English toffee pulls in a salted matzo cracker base to anchor the toffee and chocolate layers. It makes for a gift-worthy, sweet-and-salty holiday treat, but we wouldn’t blame you if you keep the whole batch for yourself.
Kang Kim
This easy toffee recipe requires only 10 minutes of cook time and comes together in under 30 minutes. The buttery toffee base gets a warming kick from ground cinnamon and cloves, and the mix of roasted mixed nuts and golden raisins transforms the classic confection into a sweet-salty textural marvel.
Consider this easy toffee-inspired recipe your next party trick: Simply cook up the toffee, fold in the potato chips, spread on a sheet pan to cool, then press crushed potato chips on top. Once it hardens, add a drizzle of melted chocolate for a final flourish.
Antonis Achilleos
These easy yet impressive desserts use puff pastry as the base for a coffee-spiked toffee sauce filling. The tartlets are rimmed in melted chocolate and festooned with toffee bits for another hit of toffee goodness.
Lucy Schaeffer
This is a riff on saltine toffee candy, a classic holiday treat that features saltine crackers dipped in caramel and chocolate. The crunchy, salty, sweet crust is the perfect match for a no-bake almond butter filling.
