toffee

Chocolate Toffee Crack Recipe

by Anne Maxfield on December 31, 2018

Accidental Locavore Toffee Crack If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to cut back on sweets, you’d better get busy or…

You may want to stop reading here.

This toffee really is like crack.

Easy and addictive.

And you probably have all four ingredients in your kitchen.

Don’t blame the Accidental Locavore for this.

Makes one large sheet pan.

Toffee Crack:

  • 40 saltine crackers (or more to fill the pan)
  • 1 cup unsalted butter
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 2 cups chocolate chips

Accidental Locavore Toffee Crack CrackersPre-heat oven to 350°.

Spray a sheet pan with vegetable spray.  Line with crackers.

Put the butter and brown sugar in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer for 3-5 minutes.

Spread sugar and butter mixture evenly over the crackers.

Bake for 8-10 minutes.

Let cool slightly (mostly so you don’t burn yourself), then top with chocolate chips.

As chips melt, spread them out until the crackers are covered.

Let cool completely, break into pieces. Serve and enjoy! 

Accidental Locavore Butter for Toffee CrackMy verdict:

Blame my cousin Ellen (and her friend Mollie). She gave me a bag for Christmas.

I should never have gotten the recipe. It’s amazingly good and stupidly easy.

Mine wasn’t as good as Ellen’s but we talked it out and I think it was the sugar.

Light or dark brown sugar or a mix will work, but don’t make my mistake and use a granular (organic) brown sugar. It doesn’t melt thoroughly and my batch came out a little grainy.

For a large sheet pan, it’s a little more than a sleeve of saltines. I put them all salty side up. Ellen has done it like that and mixed it up. She says it doesn’t matter and I believe her.

This is Ellen’s advice: “You can also sprinkle toasted sliced almonds on top of the chocolate, but Mollie does not use nuts and her toffee crack is perfect.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sweet Comfort Food

by Anne Maxfield on March 30, 2015

Accidental Locavore CaramelsDon’t you, like the Accidental Locavore, generally think of comfort food as being savory? Mac and cheese, pot pies and meatloaf are some of the usual suspects, but a case can also be made for sweet comfort foods—caramels for example.

The biggest treat for us as kids was at Christmas when a box of my grandmother’s caramels would make its annual appearance. It was strictly forbidden to open it before Christmas and even then they were carefully doled out one at a time. Soft and buttery, they were simple and delicious.

I was reminded of them recently when I met Michèle from la Petite Occasion at a networking event put on by the Specialty Food Association. She slipped me a bag of her caramels, an assortment of vanilla, bacon bourbon, salted dark chocolate and chocolate Grand Marnier. They were all fabulous! The vanilla immediately took me back to my grandmother’s, with the same soft, buttery goodness. I wasn’t sure I was going to like the bacon ones, but the bacon adds more of a textural interest to the caramels, with a hint of smokiness from it and the bourbon. Thankfully, it’s not intent on making a big “look at me I’m bacon” statement and ditto for the bourbon.

Accidental Locavore Box of CaramelsThanks to Michèle, I now have a much bigger appreciation for chocolate caramels. Her salted dark chocolate ones were my second favorite after the vanilla. Again, a hint of salt played well with the deep chocolate taste and since you have three of what I consider the basic food groups—chocolate, butter and salt, what’s not to like? The chocolate Grand Marnier caramels had the orange flavor of Grand Marnier, but again, without a big boozy flavor.

Besides the caramels, there is also a dark chocolate toffee which looks amazing. She’s selling to some retailers in the Westchester area, or you can do what I did and order directly from the website.

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