SMALL BITES

Shopping news and seasonal tips from food editor Sally Butters

Tips from food editor Sally Butters on cooking with toffee and enjoying cardamom

I’ m cooking with: TOFFEE

You’d think making toffee would be a doddle, since it’s basically a matter of burning sugar. Burn food? I can do that! But sugar is capable of some interesting permutations and to transform it from white granules to molten mass – rather than into a pot of useless crystals – there are a couple of essential rules. Follow these and you’re on the way to creating numerous sweet treats, from rich caramel sauces to brittle pralines.

The basic method requires boiling a sugar syrup – usually four parts sugar to one part water – until it turns/burns a rich amber colour. (You can leave out the water but that makes things trickier.)

Now here’s rule number one: the sugar must dissolve completely. I repeat, completely, before the mixture boils. This is where the water helps and why most cooks use caster sugar, which dissolves faster than regular sugar. I find a smallish, heavy pot useful too, plus keeping the temperature quite low.

Rule number two: you can very gently stir the sugar mix as it’s melting but once it has dissolved, hands off! The most you are allowed to do from now on, while it’s boiling, is swirl the pan occasionally when the colour starts to change – this will help the syrup colour evenly. If sugar crystals form on the side of the pan, you can brush them down with a pastry brush dipped in water, but that’s all.

And basically that’s it. Once your syrup is as dark as you’d like (around 5-10 minutes; darker means more bitter), tip it out into an oiled dish (if making our toffee-topped chia puddings on page 128, for instance), or add liquid (if making a sauce) or plunge the base of the pot into cold water to stop the cooking – because caramel can very quickly go from being a piquant dark brown to an acrid black.