Episode 1
English Toffee
Toffee is a type of candy traditionally made of caramelized sugar or molasses and butter. There are many different varieties: soft and chewy or hard and brittle. English toffee, which is actually an American style of toffee, is very buttery and typically has a topping of chopped nuts.
This English toffee is completely free of dairy ingredients and is kosher certified, making it ideal for toffee lovers with certain dietary restrictions.
The workers at this small American confectioner make this special recipe entirely by hand one small batch at a time. They start by combining water and sugar. They heat the mixture until the sugar dissolves. Then they add a formula so top secret they won't let us see it. All they'll reveal is that it contains a combination of vegetable oils and shortening, which are non-dairy substitutes for butter and beta carotene, to give the toffee that familiar golden color. They add an emulsifier called lecithin to stabilize all these ingredients. As soon as the mixture reaches the boiling point, they add salt. This enhances the flavor and helps produce a rapid boil that continues for several hours until the mixture hits a top secret target temperature. By that point, most of the water has evaporated, producing sweet, thick, liquid toffee.
Now they open a hot water valve that heats up a table, then carefully pour the toffee onto the surface. The heat keeps the toffee pliable while they spread it out. They spread it wider and wider until the toffee sheet is evenly thick. They don't actually measure. They just eyeball it, so the thickness varies somewhat. But that lack of uniformity is part of the charm of handmade sweets. They take a tool with multiple cutting wheels spaced about two inches apart. They run it over the toffee sheet in one direction, then in the other. Then they shut off the hot water valve and open the cold water one to cool the table surface and harden what are now toffee squares. Within minutes, the squares are hard enough to be broken apart.
Next, the first of two ingredients that will turn this into English toffee: molten semi-sweet chocolate. Once this tempering machine heats it to the right consistency, a pump feeds it to the enrobing machine that coats the toffee squares in two stages, starting on the bottom. The underside now coated, the squares move on to a refrigerated belt. The cold quickly hardens the chocolate. Then they move into the next station which covers the top with chocolate. As the now fully coated squares exit the enrobing machine, the belt vibrates, shaking off the excess chocolate. The squares move on to another refrigerated belt and a worker manually sprinkles them with the second ingredient that makes this English toffee: chopped pecans. The squares travel through a cooling tunnel for several minutes to set. As they reach the end of the line, excess nuts drop off and collect in a pan below, ready for sprinkling onto new squares. Some English toffee recipes call for almonds rather than pecans. Whichever variety of nut, every recipe follows the same structure.
Layering sweet and crunchy toffee, smooth and creamy chocolate, and coarsely chopped nuts - three different textures, tastes, and sensations brought together in a single confection. And just like other decadently delicious desserts, English toffee is heaven to anyone with a serious sweet tooth.
