Toffee covered with chocolate & toasted almonds... not for the faint of heart.
I’m a big fan of giving gifts that are meant to be enjoyed gustatorily. Food and drink gifts tend to be indulgent, are often created as a labor of love and won’t sit around permanently cluttering up the giftee’s apartment. I’m lucky to have food-enthusiast friends who seem to feel the same way, which means Christmas–followed almost immediately by my birthday–is pretty much guaranteed to be delicious. I was delighted to receive all sorts of treats this year, including a bottle of Bärenjäger honey liqueur that is earmarked for my beloved wintertime hot toddies (and if there’s any left come spring, for a bastardized version of a Bees’ Knees cocktail), an order form for homemade ice cream customizable to my wildest culinary dreams, a stack of “happy” hamburger patties, homemade fromage blanc with wine jelly (already devoured alongside another gift of jalapeno pepper jelly), and a heavy, rich-smelling plum pudding with accompanying lump of butter that I’m dying to dig into.
On the giving side of things I chose skillet toffee after reading this recipe at thekitchn. The Nerd and I, both new to toffee-making, tackled it together. It turned out to be easier than I expected, but also harder; we had some laughable trial-and-error lessons. Like: his super-hot, slow-to-change electric burner was definitely set waaay too high the first batch. All that butter and sugar went from melting to smoking, burnt brown and separated in about 2 seconds flat! Tragedy! But the following batches came out better. You can see a sample of the good stuff pictured above. Obviously, I was compelled to keep tasting the finished product to make sure everything was ok… Merry Christmas to me!
Yummy, yum, yum! Although the down side to this is now the huge urge to make toffee myself…
How can making yourself a tray of toffee ever have a downside?