It's the second most common question I get when I'm doing a tasting. “Is this brittle?” or “Is brittle and toffee the same thing?” They aren't. The most obvious difference is that brittle is a more simple recipe of just sugar and toffee's recipe is sugar and butter. It doesn't sound like a big difference, but it is.
How many of you are Peanut Brittle fans? My wife loves it, the mix of sweet with a nutty salty crunch. And the pieces are always big so it satisfies her sweet tooth. So how is a brittle different from toffee? Last week I covered the taffy and toffee difference, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/toffee-vs-taffy-what-difference-mike-calder?trk=prof-post
The cooking processes are similar. You start with sugar and water and like toffee, brittle traditionally it is poured out on a slap of marble to cool, but cooking the cooking temperatures are higher and there are few differences in ingredients.
Brittle is a hard sugar candy embedded with nuts such as pecans, almonds or peanuts . Traditionally, a mixture of sugar and water is heated to the hard crack stage. The hard-crack stage is the highest temperature you are likely to see specified in a candy recipe approximately 300 °F (149°C). . At these temperatures, almost all water is gone from the syrup. Drop a tiny amount of molten syrup in cold water and it will form hard threads that break easily when bent. Many recipes also call for ingredients such as corn syrup and salt in the first step of heating. When it gets close to the hard crack stage flavoring can be added, spices, leavening agents and often peanut butter or even for peanut brittle are added. The hot candy is poured out onto a flat surface for cooling. When the brittle cools, it's hard and usually translucent.
Toffee starts with a mixture of butter and sugar from the beginning. It is cooked to a lower temperature, called the hard ball stage 250° F–265° F. At this stage, the syrup will form "ropy" threads as it drips from the cooking spoon. As it cooks there’s less and less moisture in the sugar/butter syrup. A little of this syrup dropped into cold water will form a hard ball. If you remove the ball out of the water, it won’t flatten, but you can still change its shape by squashing it. Nuts can be added just after the butter has completely melted. The toffee texture will be hard too, but softer then brittle and the flavor will be far more buttery.
So now you have it.. Toffee, taffy, brittle. What is your favorite?
It's the second most common question I get when I'm doing a tasting. “Is this brittle?” or “Is brittle and toffee the same thing?” They aren't. The most obvious difference is that brittle is a more simple recipe of just sugar and toffee's recipe is sugar and butter. It doesn't sound like a big difference, but it is.
How many of you are Peanut Brittle fans? My wife loves it, the mix of sweet with a nutty salty crunch. And the pieces are always big so it satisfies her sweet tooth. So how is a brittle different from toffee? Last week I covered the taffy and toffee difference, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/toffee-vs-taffy-what-difference-mike-calder?trk=prof-post
The cooking processes are similar. You start with sugar and water and like toffee, brittle traditionally it is poured out on a slap of marble to cool, but cooking the cooking temperatures are higher and there are few differences in ingredients.
Brittle is a hard sugar candy embedded with nuts such as pecans, almonds or peanuts . Traditionally, a mixture of sugar and water is heated to the hard crack stage. The hard-crack stage is the highest temperature you are likely to see specified in a candy recipe approximately 300 °F (149°C). . At these temperatures, almost all water is gone from the syrup. Drop a tiny amount of molten syrup in cold water and it will form hard threads that break easily when bent. Many recipes also call for ingredients such as corn syrup and salt in the first step of heating. When it gets close to the hard crack stage flavoring can be added, spices, leavening agents and often peanut butter or even for peanut brittle are added. The hot candy is poured out onto a flat surface for cooling. When the brittle cools, it's hard and usually translucent.
Toffee starts with a mixture of butter and sugar from the beginning. It is cooked to a lower temperature, called the hard ball stage 250° F–265° F. At this stage, the syrup will form "ropy" threads as it drips from the cooking spoon. As it cooks there’s less and less moisture in the sugar/butter syrup. A little of this syrup dropped into cold water will form a hard ball. If you remove the ball out of the water, it won’t flatten, but you can still change its shape by squashing it. Nuts can be added just after the butter has completely melted. The toffee texture will be hard too, but softer then brittle and the flavor will be far more buttery.
So now you have it.. Toffee, taffy, brittle. What is your favorite?
