Brittle vs Toffee
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 simpler recipe, consistently mainly of sugar, while toffee's recipe is sugar and butter. It doesn't sound like a big difference, but it is…
So, 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
For brittle, the cooking processes are similar. You start with sugar and water, and similar to toffee, it is traditionally poured out on a slap of marble to cool. Butcooking temperatures are different and ingredients vary.
Brittle is a hard sugar candy embedded with nuts. 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 any 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. This is when it is called the hard crack stage, and flavoring and nuts can be added. Sometimes spices,leavening agents and even peanut butter 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 sugar AND butter 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. 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 wile you are stirring it to reach the hard ball stage. When it is ready, the texture will be hard too, but softer then brittle and the flavor will be much more buttery than the brittle.
In sum – the process of cooking is different between the two, resulting in a different texture and flavor, but we love them both.
Brittle: a sugar/water mix cooked to the hard-crack state. Then nuts, corn-syrup, and butter added and brittle is cooled. It is hard and brittle, thus the name.
Toffee: starts with a combined sugar/butter/ nut mix cooked together, reaching a slightly lower temperature hard ball state, and then the toffee is poured out. It is hard but a much softer crunch when bitten into, than the brittle.
So now you have it: Toffee, taffy, brittle. What is your favorite?
