Toffee and Coffee

I conquered a fear. I made candy. I was terrified that it wouldn't work. But it definitely worked. Tuesday for snack I made two and a half types of toffee. The first batch was plain old butter toffee with chocolate chips melted on top. The second patch I threw some coffee in it to match the smitten kitchen recipe and then on half of it I sprinkled peanuts. And voila, I had two and a half different types of toffee. It was surprisingly easy. It took hardly any time. And other than the giant bucket of molasses mishap, everything went smoothly.

Chocolate melting in a 300˚F butter and sugar mixture

Interestingly the toffees came out two very different colors. It also effected their taste. The first batch was a deeper color and had a richer flavor while the second batch was lighter and slightly less flavorful. I dont know what I did differently to make the first one better, but in the future I am going to try and achieve the richness of batch number one. 

Breaking the toffee into bite sized pieces was half the fun. 

I have a new favorite candy. Fresh homemade toffee.

I was pretty worried that the toffee would fail so I made chocolate coffee shortbread cookies before dinner as a back up. I wasn't a huge fan of the way they turned out. They didn't have the typical melt in your mouth shortbread cookie taste. But they were a good addition to the toffee.

Recipes: Coffee Toffee and Espresso-Chocolate Shortbread Cookies