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Chocolate Almond Toffee

Source of Recipe

From "Camille Glenn's Old-Fashioned Christmas Cookbook"


Recipe Introduction

"Toffee is one of the best homemade candies I know - and Christmas isn't Christmas without candy, is it? This toffee is delicious plain, but the coating of chocolate makes it especially marvelous."

List of Ingredients

1½ cups whole almonds, blanched or unblanched
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1¼ cups sugar
3 Tbsp light corn syrup
¼ tsp cream of tartar
Pinch of salt
2 tsp pure vanilla extract or brandy
4 or 5 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted


Recipe

Preheat the oven to 160° F.

Spread the almonds on a rimmed pastry sheet and bake them in a preheated oven until they are dry and crisp, about 2 hours. Watch them carefully - you don't want to toast them. Set them aside, still on the pastry sheet.

Combine the butter, sugar, corn syrup, cream of tartar, and salt in a heavy 2-quart (or larger) saucepan and bring to a boil. Cover the pan and let the mixture cook for 3 to 4 minutes, allowing the steam to dissolve the sugar crystals that form on the sides of the pan. Remove the cover and continue to cook, stirring gently, until the syrup registers 300° F on a candy thermometer, about 3 to 4 minutes after it reaches the boiling point (watch it carefully). As it cooks, keep wiping the sides of the pan with a pastry brush that has been dipped in boiling water (or better still, in melted butter) to remove the sugar crystals. If at any time the toffee seems to be darkening too fast, place the pan over a flame tamer to keep the toffee from burning.

Remove the toffee from the heat, allow the boiling to subside for a second or two, then stir in the vanilla.

Pour the toffee over the almonds on the pastry sheet, stirring to cover them thoroughly with the syrup and to spread the mixture evenly over the sheet. Allow the toffee to cool.

When the toffee has set, brush it with the melted chocolate. Let the chocolate cool and solidify and then break the candy into jagged pieces. Store it in an airtight tin.


Makes about 1½ pounds