Well here we are again, in lockdown once more. Sad as the weather is still mild for some decent campervan trips, but we must all do our bit. Luckily we did get to celebrate Halloween with a friend before lockdown and do our village Spooktacular Halloween walk, which was awesome. When we came back my friend made meatballs and we had toffee apples for pudding. What was even sadder for my eldest this year was missing bonfire night and firework displays, so to cheer him up this weekend we got the fire pit out and made some delicious bonfire toffee to go munch on.
I've wanted to do toffee work for a while but never had a sugar thermometer until my recent Amazon delivery. So I'm pleased to say it was successful, a tip I learnt second time around was afterwards to clean the pan, clean it with boiling water over the hob, obvious really but last time we were scrubbing and scouring like total amateurs!
So here are my recipes, Enjoy!
Toffee Apples
8 apples
400g caster sugar
100ml water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
4 tablespoon of golden syrup
red food colouring
8 lolly sticks
Pull any stalks off the apples and push the lolly stick into the base of each apple making sure its firmly wedged in. Put a large piece of grease proof paper onto a wooden board.
Tip the sugar into a saucepan, add 100ml water and the lemon juice.Simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Tip the pan to move around, do not stir. Add the syrup and bring to a light boil but make sure it doesn't boil over, until it reaches hard crack stage on your thermometer, mine is around 150c. When ready add the food colouring and turn off the heat.
Working quickly dip in each apple tipping the pan so all the skin is covered. Top tip, run boiling water over the apples first to get rid of the waxiness that may prevent toffee from sticking. Then leave them to set on your wooden board.
Bonfire Toffee 450g dark brown sugar
125ml hot water
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
115g black treacle
115g golden syrup
Line and grease well the size of an A4 tin with parchment.
Put the sugar and the water in a heavy bottomed pan and heat gently without stirring until the sugar is dissolved. You can tilt pan to see if sugar has dissolved.
Weigh out the remaining ingredients into a greased jug as that will make it easier to tip into the pan. Tip into the pan once the sugar has dissolved. Pop in your sugar thermometre and give it a little swirl to mix (do not overstir).
Bring to the boil and boil until you reach soft crack on your thermometer, mine is just shy of 140c. This can take 30 minutes but still watch it as it can creep up fast. As soon as you reach this temperature, tip it into your greased tin and leave to cool.
Once cool, remove from the tin and crack it up with a rolling pin. Store in an airtight tin, or you can wrap up in cellophane bags and give as a gift.
