Homemade English Toffee

Crunchy, buttery toffee topped with melted chocolate, this delicious Homemade English Toffee is so easy to make and incredibly delicious. The perfect Christmas candy.

While Laurie will try to make the argument that nothing says Christmas like my mom’s Sherry Cake.  I say that Homemade English Toffee is Christmas.  For as far back as I can remember, I helped my mom make this buttery chocolatey bit of candy goodness.  It’s a very simple recipe that I guarantee everyone will love.  The best part is you can make a couple of batches and give out tins of English Toffee as Christmas gifts.  Just make sure you keep some for yourself.

How to Make the Toffee Mixture

Step 1: Melt the butter in a medium saucepan on Medium-High heat.  We use Salted Sweet Cream butter for Homemade English Toffee.  You can use margarine if you prefer but the Toffee will taste a little bit differently.
Step 2:  Add the sugar to the melted butter and stir until it is fully incorporated with the butter.

Step 3:  Now the fun part begins.  You need to bring the mixture up to a boil while continuously stirring so you don’t burn the candy mixture.  The good news is that you don’t need a candy thermometer to make this toffee.  You just need to cook the sugar and butter mixture until it turns the color of peanut butter.  It should take about 10-15 minutes depending on your stove.  So start stirring!  First, the candy mixture will reach a boil.  We keep the burner on Medium-High.  If you have the burner too high, you can burn the mixture.  Keep stirring! Next, the mixture will start thickening up.  Keep stirring!  About halfway through the cooking process, the mixture will start darkening up.   But it’s still not the color of peanut butter.  Keep stirring!  Now is a good time to get out a can of peanut butter.  We’ve been cooking and stirring for about 10 minutes at this point. Still not done.  Keep stirring!  This is what the mixture should look like – a medium tan color very similar to peanut butter.  Stop stirring and take the candy off the heat.

Assembling the English Toffee

Step 4: Distribute the chopped nuts evenly in a large cookie sheet.  You do not need to prepare the cookie sheet in any way. There is plenty of butter in the candy mixture, it will not stick to the pan once it is cooled. We used Pecans for this batch.  But we have used walnuts.  And we have made it without nuts at all.  It still tastes amazing whichever way you would rather where nuts are concerned.  The same thing goes for how finely or rough to chop the nuts.   We usually go somewhere in the middle between finely chopped and a rough chop. 
Step 5: Immediately pour the candy mixture into the cookie sheet with the nuts.  Try to pour it evenly over the whole cookie sheet. Here is what it will look like.  The candy mixture doesn’t have to go all the way to the edges.  Let it set up for a few minutes – about 5 should do it.

Step 6: Sprinkle the semi-sweet chocolate chips onto the top of the still-hot candy.  The chocolate chips will start to melt. Wait until the chocolate chips are mostly melted. They will look like this.
Step 7: Now you can use a knife to spread the chocolate over the toffee mixture.

Step 8: If you like nuts, you can also sprinkle some finely chopped nuts on top of the melted chocolate. Or you can decorate the Toffee with Christmas sprinkles, as we did here.
Step 9: Let the Homemade English Toffee cool and harden for a couple of hours.  Then you can break it up into pieces.  Use the tip of a knife (as shown above) to start breaking up the candy into pieces. The pieces don’t have to be uniform.  In fact, it looks best on a plate when they are not.

Other Candy Recipes You Will Love

• Easy Chocolate Fudge
• Christmas Peanut Clusters
• Homemade Candy Pecans
• Peanut Butter Balls

Step-by-Step Video Tutorial