{recipe} Almost Thornton’s Christmas Toffee

My parents travel a lot, and on a trip to the UK last year, my Dad became obsessed with Thornton’s toffee. He went through several bags that were supposed to be gifts, and started ordering it on the internet at exorbitant prices. I looked around for recipes that might approximate the taste and texture, and last Christmastime we replaced our old standby toffee recipe with this one from Epicurious.

This recipe is not exactly Thornton’s, but it’s the closest I’ve found so far. The secret is Lyle’s Golden Syrup, a British product that’s kind of like corn syrup. I found it at World Market, but if you can’t find it locally you can add it to your next Amazon order.

Last year I cut up sheets of parchment paper to individually wrap them, partly to be cute and partly to prevent them from sticking together. This year I purchased some green and pink foil candy wrappers at Sur La Table (the very same with which, in a past life, I wrapped countless pieces of homemade Italian nougat at Rose Pistola) which should be a less labor-intensive and bling-ier way to wrap them.

I’m going to try using the end cuts of the toffee as the caramels in the Million Dollar Caramel Apple Cake, which I plan to make for Christmas morning. I’ve learned my lesson about using a tried and true recipe for Christmas morning, after last year… when I made a bacon cinnamon coffee cake and the power went out so we had to cook it on the BBQ and it tasted like smoky pork buns and was burned on the outside and raw on the inside. I really hope I don’t have to bake the caramel cake on the BBQ this year, because I think those caramels would be mighty hard to clean off the grill.

Get the recipe for this toffee at Epicurious.