Not so Secret Recipe

With the fear of being kicked out of my Pink Smoothie Girls blog, I am not posting this recipe on it.

Many years ago, after I married Ken, I was introduced to his Mom's toffee recipe. 



The original recipe. . .





written by Ken's Mom



 



 
 

To my knowledge, I'm the only one in the family to continue the tradition of making it each year.  Ken did say that he thinks our niece Holly makes it, but I don't believe any of his 3 sisters do.  So I'm going to pass the recipe on to new generations. (Or to new people anyway.)  It is one of our treasured traditions and is sooooo good.  Maybe not good FOR you, but my rationalization is that it's only once a year so GO FOR IT!!!!!

Christmas Toffee

Makes 2 pounds

1 cup sugar

1 stick of Blue Bonnet margarine

(Don't use butter or other brands of margarine.  Blue Bonnet is the best as it doesn't burn as easily as some of the other brands of margarine.)



Ingredients assembled and ready to go



3 Tbs. water (my mother-in-law- wrote it H2O on my recipe card.Ha (she was a nurse so it was easier to write it that way.)

1 Tbsp light Karo syrup

chopped pecans (about 1 1/2 cups)

Melt the margarine and stir in the sugar, water, and syrup. 

 Cook to 290 degrees on a candy thermometer. Use a medium heat and stir it continuously with a wooden spoon to keep it from scorching.



Watching the temp rise.



Add 1/2 cup chopped pecans, stir and cook for 1 minute.

Nuts added and cooking for 1 minute

Pour onto a greased cookie sheet and spread. 

Then cover with melted chocolate (use real chocolate)
Be sure to let the toffee cool first!

 and sprinkle with chopped nuts.

  Cool then turn whole candy and spread chocolate on the other side.  Sprinkle on more nuts.  Cool then cut or break into bite size pieces.

Now . . . over the years I've adapted this somewhat.  I'm lazy, so I only put the chocolate and nuts on one side.  Also, after putting the nuts on the chocolate, using a piece of waxed paper covering the toffee, I press the nuts firmly into the chocolate so as to prevent most of the nuts from falling off during the breaking and/or eating process. 

However, anything that falls off and small bits of toffee are saved and used as an ice cream topping.  Yum!  We don't waste a morsel...however, we DO "waist" a morsel, if you know what I mean.

Yummy left-overs for ice cream!

I use the wrapper from the margarine to grease the cookie sheet.

I use a double boiler to melt the chocolate, over simmering, not boiling water. 

If you don't have a double boiler put a smaller sauce pan into a larger one that has some water in it.  Use the smaller pan for the chocolate chips and let the pan rest in the water of the larger pan.  Make sure that water is not allowed into the pan with the chocolate though.



Alternate chocolate melting method



Now, if you don't like nuts, leave them out.  We made a special batch for our dear Katie and I'm anxious to hear how she likes it.

P.S.  After making the special batch, Ken sampled it and said "Something's missing."  (Ya think???) 

It doesn't matter, as long as Katie thinks it's good.

MERRY  CHRISTMAS  TO  ALL !

The final product . . . enjoy!