Toffee is sugar and butter cooked to 300℉, caramel is sugar and butter and cream, and cooked to 248℉, hardens at 270℉.
Heath bar VS Enstrom's
Heath
Pros:
inexpensive
readily available
neatly packaged in individual servings
Cons:
tastes like crap
I meant to say just now not so great chocolate
Enstrom's
Pros:
reliably made with real ingredients
makes great gift
shows you know good candy and appreciate craftsmanship involved
delicious
contains serious chocolate and healthy nuts
always carefully handled
top quality all around
gift and holiday packaging available
online store
Cons:
addictive
well, it's all butter and sugar, innit.
It occurred to me, those Heath bars are toffee, a hard caramel, more hard than pralines, draped with chocolate. And we did all that before.
The thing that made the Heath bar I ate taste so bad is the chocolate coating. It is such a bad chocolate it nearly made me barf. I bought two because they are in the Ben & Jerry's ice cream and the chunks of Heath bar are excellent that way, but not as a candy bar unfrozen outside of ice cream encasement. And it is so bad I do not want the second Heath bar. The chocolate coating is oily.
We know about chocolate, I buy it in large boxes of couverture, and that is not good chocolate. Anything would be better. I think they do that so it coats easily.They spray it on or drip it on by a chocolate enrobing machine. Hard toffee rectangles travel along a chain belt and pass under a chocolate waterfall, a chocolatefall that recycles. The bottoms already coated. The Heath bar enrobing machine apparently goes very fast. It is chocolate for children who do not know any better Same as Kinder Surprise chocolate, great when you're little, not so much when you're grown.
Homemade would be better than that.
Enstrom's out of Grand Junction makes this spectacularly. Their toffee is thicker and holds toasted almonds, their chocolate coating is much better quality and not oiled down, and then an additional coating of powdery toasted nuts.
It is excellent.
I gave a box to Ed Merrill to give to his dad because he mentioned toffee is his dad's favorite candy.
Months later I saw Ed and I asked, "How did that go?"
Ed said, "Oh, Chip." He paused dramatically and looked at me sternly. "Now I have to admit I stole your present." He broke eye contact and hung his head, also dramatically, then looked back up. "Our whole family gathered in Bermuda to settle some more of Mom's things and as usual Sis started a dispute at home at the table. It was Valentine's Day besides, and Dad became despondent really down right then because his kids were being so ugly again and arguing over things. Sis wanted the Bermuda place for herself and said so right there. Dad stopped eating, flounced off to sit behind his desk in the dark by himself. I waited then followed and went in and handed him your box of toffee. He became emotional and told me nobody ever gave him a Valentine's gift before. Nobody. That was a first. I felt ashamed. I did not have the heart to tell him it wasn't' intended for Valentine's and it wasn't from me. Sorry. Ha ha ha ha ha."
