The Best Holiday Toffee Recipe

Today I want to share a recipe that my family has been making for years. It's one of my favourite holiday traditions and treats and I hope you'll love it too! For as long as I can remember, one of my favourite holiday treats has been my family's Christmas toffee.  When I was growing up my grandad and my aunt would always make the family toffee every year but more often than not, it ended up a bit burnt turning into something my family would call 'slate' rather than toffee. I won't lie, I grew up thinking that 'slate' was what toffee was supposed to taste like so it wasn't until my dad and I started making it every year that I realized how burnt it had been! haha I can't remember exactly when, but over ten years ago (probably closer to 15) my dad and I decided that we'd take over and we've been making it every year ever since. 

A lot has changed since we first started making the toffee - we've really nailed down our timing and temperature and method over the years after a batches of trial and error. We now have a recipe that makes delicious toffee every year that the whole family looks forward to and today I thought I'd share that recipe with you here! Plus, it really is so simple - there are only three ingredients (basically two parts fat to one part sugar haha) and it takes less than an hour from start to finish and you're left with a delicious treat to share and enjoy! (PS - this toffee makes for great gifts too!)

Christmas Toffee Recipe 

All you need are four ingredients:

- 1 lb butter

-1 1/3 Cup Rogers Golden Syrup

-4 Cups White Sugar (yep, I know, that's a lot of sugar! haha)

- 3 Cans of Eagle Brand Condensed Milk

You'll also need a big pot, a big wooden spoon and a few trays (baking sheets are fine) or moulds (more on that below)

Here's What to Do:

With your stovetop on medium heat add the butter and stir until melted, then add the syrup, condensed milk, sugar and stir. Once the ingredients are all melted and mixed keep the stovetop on medium heat and bring the mixture to a boil. The most important part of this process is making sure that you constantly stir the mixture. This toffee is a two person job because it really should be stirred at pretty much all times to avoid any bits being burned. Once the mixture begins to boil, the timing begins. Every year our timing has varied between 25-30 minutes so at 25 minutes dip a spoon into the mixture and drizzle the toffee into a glass of ice water. If the toffee hardens once it hits the water, it's ready! (Don't go past 30 minutes or you'll end up with slate! haha).

Tip: keep the heat at just above medium for the whole time

When you're ready to pour you have a few options... In our early years of making toffee we'd pour directly into two greased baking sheets but then the struggle was how to break apart the toffee. The toffee is hard so it doesn't cut well and inevitably we'd end up freezing the sheets then smashing them (which totally works great btw) but then we started playing around with silicone baking moulds and those are my favourite. We usually do a bit of a combo where we pour about half of the mixture into greased silicone moulds (I grabbed these round and heart ones from IKEA this year) and the other half onto a baking sheet. Allow to sit overnight or throw them in the freezer and you're set!

*Tip: pour quickly! The mixture continues to cook even once you've removed it from the heat so pour quickly to get consistent candy!