Making homemade pistachio toffee can be harder than it looks. I’ll show you every toffee fail you can possibly have and how to fix them all. Then, I’ll share my homemade toffee recipe for chocolate-covered toffee with pistachios. This post is for you for all the times you made toffee from scratch and failed. I tried to make homemade toffee, and I messed up everything possible.
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It took three tries…two of which ended up in the trash. I am sharing everything I learned, and a video that shows some of my “bloopers” and tough lessons. If you love chocolate desserts as much as I do, you will want to check out my best gluten free chocolate desserts.
How to Make Homemade Toffee:
Today, we are going to talk about homemade toffee. I love the stuff but had never thought to make it from scratch. I wanted to give it a try, and I found a great toffee recipe here. The recipe by FunkySeaMonkey looked easy enough.
I was naive to think this pistachio toffee candy would be easy to make…I could almost taste the buttery crunch of the toffee! I had great plans to use this toffee as a topping for a dessert I created…not to mention my kids wanted to make teacher gifts with it.
FAIL #1:
Butter separating out
Here was my first attempt at making this homemade toffee recipe. I had two cups of sugar and two cups of butter. I didn’t realize how important temperature could be. See that buttery oil slick on top of my toffee?
My first batch of toffee started great. I had a pot of boiling toffee, and it was browning beautifully. Then, butter happened.
The butter separated from the toffee, leaving a big oil slick-looking goo. You can see it when I dumped the toffee onto the parchment paper. Nothing is more frustrating than when the butter separates from the sugar in cooking toffee!
Common toffee making mistakes:
Here are the mistakes I made on the first batch of homemade toffee:
- I started with way too high of a heat. (At least, I think this was an issue.) I set my portable cooktop at 260 degrees F.
- I stirred too quickly. I didn’t realize this could be an issue.
- I didn’t add a dash of salt. They say you can save a ruined batch of toffee by adding a dash of salt. It didn’t work for me with this batch, but I added a little salt in my second attempt.
To combat these issues, I tossed this batch of greasy, buttery toffee into the trash and started again.
Second attempt at making toffee:
This time, I started with a lower heat starting temperature on my cooking surface. I gradually melted the sugar and butter and heated up my toffee.
Things are thickening up nicely, and the butter is still behaving!
Toffee Making Tips:
I used the whisk, mixing slowly. I think this allowed the sugar to blend into the butter as the toffee mixture heated up.
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What color does toffee become when cooking?
The homemade toffee is ready. See the beautiful golden brown color? And the butter stayed mixed in with the sugar. (YAY!)
How to prevent toffee from separating:
- To prevent separation this time, I gradually used a whisk to mix the toffee ingredients. (I tried not to stir too often, but when I did, I used the whisk.)
- I slowly cooked my toffee mixture to the perfect 300º F. I started my cooktop at 160º F and gradually increased the temperature to 212º F.
- My toffee browned beautifully, and I poured it onto the pan.
So far, everything was perfect. The butter didn’t separate, and the toffee looked creamy and delicious—time to add the melted chocolate and pistachios.
The chocolate spread perfectly onto the chocolate. You can see how quickly the pistachio toffee hardens. See the underside? I put the tray in the freezer to cool for a few minutes.
I removed the tray and broke apart the toffee.
And here we have FAIL #2.
The chocolate didn’t stick to the toffee. So now I had a thin chocolate layer broken into bits and a separate toffee layer all broken into bits. Ugh, this is not looking good for chocolate-covered toffee!
I went to Google again to see what could have caused the chocolate not to stick to the toffee.
Why chocolate didn’t stick to toffee:
- This likely happened because the toffee started to cool before I added the melted chocolate.
- Some recommend putting the chocolate bits on top of the toffee and letting the heat melt the chocolate.
- Another recommendation was to dust cocoa powder on top of the toffee just before adding the melted chocolate.
By this point, I was a little over all of my failures! I did what any person tired of tossing food into the trash would do. I microwaved the chocolate back on! (I didn’t have the heart to toss another batch of pistachio toffee in the trash!)
Here is a video I put together to show you my whole process for making this homemade toffee recipe. I didn’t include the video of the buttery disaster of the first batch, but you can see that in the pictures above!
Tools:
- An easy to read candy thermometer.
- A strong whisk to ensure the mixture blends well.
Love This Recipe?
If you made and enjoyed this recipe, I would be incredibly grateful if you could leave a comment below. This will help others know this recipe is delicious. Thank you!
Homemade Chocolate Pistachio Toffee
Ingredients
Method
- Add sugar, butter, salt, and vanilla to a pot.
- Cook on medium-low heat until blended. Use a whisk to blend slowly.
- Gradually increase the heat and let the mixture boil. It should thicken and darken to a golden color.
- Continue to whisk to blend every few minutes. Mix slowly.
- Melt the chocolate in a microwave-safe dish.
- When your toffee is a dark golden color and registers 300 F degrees with a candy thermometer, remove and pour onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
- Spread thinly over the parchment paper. Quickly dust lightly with cocoa powder and then quickly add the melted chocolate.
- Use a spatula to spread the melted chocolate over the toffee. Add pistachios.
- Refrigerate to cool. When the mixture is hardened, break apart then store the toffee in a container.
Nutrition
Video
Notes
Nutritional Disclaimer
Nutritional information is an estimate provided to you as a courtesy. You should calculate the actual nutritional information with the products and brands you are using with your preferred nutritional calculator.
Tried this recipe?
Let us know how it was!
Hey I loved the toffee recipe! So good. The only complaint I have is at the end of chewing the toffee becomes very chewy. .
Hi Sara, I haven’t heard of this from anyone who has made it, and I didn’t experience this. From a quick online search, it seems to be related to the initial temperature of boiling the toffee too high.
Where is the video. You say you made a video but I can’t find it anywhere
Hi, the video is in the recipe card.
I am looking to make the toffee have a pistachio flavor. Any suggestions? Also, can I add ground pistachios to the butter/sugar mixture? What about green food coloring?
Hi Douglas, I haven’t tested using a flavoring. I think Lor Ann makes a pistachio flavored extract. I am not sure how that will affect the candy in the cooking process though.
Can I throw my failed toffe with the chocolate on it and try again by heating it up again in a pot
Hi Liz, to be honest, I am not sure. Where did it fail? Is the butter incorporated into the sugar mixture? Are you using a candy thermometer while making this recipe?
Instead of throwing out a failed toffee. it can be re-melted slowly with water, milk or similar to make ice cream or pancake syrup, or dissolve and add to cake batter, taking into consideration the quantity of sugar and butter.
Great idea Lisa, thank you!
If you used chocolate chips, that’s the reason the chocolate didn’t stick. Since chocolate chips are mainly used in chocolate chip cookies, they are also meant to hold their shape and they have ingredients in them to stop them from melting and spreading out. You need to use a melting chocolate with out any waxes or vegetable oils, or a high quality dipping chocolate to stop your chocolate layer from separating from your toffee. Also, it can take up to 10 minutes for your sugar to dissolve. Once it’s been completely dissolved then you can turn the heat up.
Hey! What a great recipe, thanks for sharing it! The batch of toffee I just made turned out beautiful, but a little to hard. Any suggestions? Thanks so much!!!
Hi Jenny, What temperature boiling point did you use? It is possible your temperature was too high.
I made toffee just recently for the 1st time. It tastes good, but the toffee did not harden. I got it to temp the chocolate spread great but I don’t know what I did.
Hi Dawn, did you check the temperature of the boiling sugar mixture? I think when the toffee is soft it may not have cooked long enough at the right temperature.
I made several batches of toffee for Christmas but two of the batches were flops. One batch the butter separated and the second was too soft. The problem is, while they were cooling, I spread the batches with chocolate and almonds. Do I need to scrape the chocolate and almonds off to try and re-heat and salvage? Can they be salvaged or should I just discard the batches? Thank you for your help.
Hi Vickie, I don’t think you can salvage when the butter separates. I couldn’t on mine and ended up tossing them. The one that was too soft may have been if your toffee didn’t heat enough when cooking. Toffee can be really frustrating, but once you get it, you can make it much easier the next time. Good luck.
Hi this looks amazing!
I’m trying to bake this with dark chocolate but I can’t get the chocolate to temper properly and stick to the base. If I temper the chocolate properly and add to a cooled base it breaks off. If I melt the chocolate on a warm base so it sticks, I get tempering spots and streaks of bloom. Any suggestions?
Thank you
I had this happen a few times when I was first trying to make this recipe. Did you read fail #2 about midway down in the post? These are the main reasons that can happen, and I mention dusting with cocoa powder to help it adhere. I hope this helps Michelle. Please keep me posted.
Hi Sandi,
I did see that, thank you. At what point do you add the powder ? I tried it the other day and got bloom in my dark chocolate. Also, what do you use to sprinkle it on? I tried a teaspoon and it didn’t work very well.
Hi Michelle, I dusted it quickly right after spreading the toffee out.
I use chocolate chips all if the time without problem. As soon as I pour the toffee. I pour the chips over the hot toffee Let is sit just a bit until they soften from the hot toffee then spread it all over. I put it in the freezer for a short time until it hardens. Works every time.
That is a great tip, Joanie. Thank you so much for coming back and sharing your method to help other readers.
I have made toffee many times and have had a few disasters, but usually comes out delicious. Today I got side-tracked and the temp went way above 300. Is my toffee ruined? It handled ok and no separation but it was darker than usual.
Hi Sharon, it may be burned if it is darker. Have you tasted it to see if it has an off-flavor?
I have made toffee before and turned out well. However, this time I had a total fail. The toffee was very grainy and sugar not smooth and hard crack.. Do you think humidity could play a part? Any suggestions would be appreciated.Thanks.
Hi Becky, Toffee can be so frustrating to make. I am not sure if humidity, or using too high a heat, in the beginning, could cause it to be grainy the way you described.