Toffee
Confection
Top 10 pairings
Toffee is a hard, glassy confection made by boiling sugar and butter together — often with a little water and sometimes golden syrup or molasses — until the syrup reaches the hard-crack stage and the sugars begin to caramelise. Poured out, cooled and snapped into shards, it is deep amber, buttery and brittle, with a rich, faintly burnt-caramel flavour.
Picking a good onedrag
Glassy amber, snapping cleanSlumped, sticky, rancid
Hard, the gloss dullingEveryday bestThe all-rounder: smash to shards over ice cream, fold the pieces through blondies and cookie dough, or crush over a banoffee.
Hold a shard to the lightStill amber and clear at the centre, the surface gloss gone a little flat
Snap a pieceStill snaps, but with a duller click, and the broken face feels faintly tacky
Smell a freshly broken pieceStill sweet and buttery, though the toasted depth has flattened back toward plain sugar
The bag and the labelA sealed supermarket bag or tin, dated, the pieces still moving freely inside it