Sweets - Notnick's Cookbook

Toffee apples

6 apples
400g sugar (golden caster works well)
4 tbl golden syrop
1 tsp vinegar

Pour boiling water over the apples to remove the wax.

Put sticks into the apples a prepare a baking tray (to put them on once dipped)

in a pan mix the sugar and 100ml of water, heat till the sugar disolves.

add the golden syrop and vinegar. heat to 150ºc / hard crack stage.

cool the outside of the pan with a little cold water, to arrest cooking, but keep the caramel liquid.

dip each apple in tha caramel and pit on thesheet to cool.

I love butterscotch. It used to be the sweet for travel. Before a long road trip with may parents, we’d buy sweets – and my job en route would be to hold on to and dish out the sweets. one of the favourites would be butterscotch. I remember it came in a flat packet – similar to a small pack of playing cards with sticks of butterscotch – each stick individually wrapped, with a line in the middle to conveniently snap into to standard size lozenges. Was it Callard & Bowser? maybe. I can’t remember.

1lb demerara sugar

1/4pt water

2oz butter

Put the sugar in a tall pan (tall, because it’s going to bubble up) along with the water. Heat until the sugar dissolves.

Bring to the boil, then boil until the temp reaches the soft crack stage 132°C (270°F), (when a drop of the syrup in cold water makes hard but not brittle threads).

Add butter a little at a time, stirring until dissolved before adding more.

Pour out into a greased 18 cm (7 inch) square tin. Mark into squares when almost set with the back of a knife. When set, break along the marked lines. Keep in an airtight container.

Toffee popcorn

75-100g popcorn kernels

2 tblsp sunflower oil

40 g sugar (use soft light brown for a bigger taste, but white works too)

2 tblsp golden syrup

40g butter

pinch salt

First, pop the popcorn and set aside. (biggest pan, hottest oil etc) now you need to make the toffee and pour it over the popped corn.

For the toffee, put the butter, syrup and sugar into a pan and boil. it needs to get to the ‘hard crack’ stage – to test for it, drip a little bit into a glass of cold water, and if it comes out as rock solid strands, not soft balls, its done. Once done, pour it over the popcorn and quickly stir in. Set it aside and let it cool. Break apart, and yum!

Sweet Popcorn

I can’t remember when I started making popcorn- under 10 though. (I was very young though.) The beauty of this recipe is that it all goes in one pan, but makes really good sweet crunchy popcorn. It doesn’t keep very long at all – hours- so make it hot when you need it, and don’t try to store it! It only takes a couple of minutes to make though!

1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup pop corn kernels
1/2 tsp salt

Put a large pan (with a lid) on the stove to heat. Add the oil, then all of the other ingredients. Shake briskly to mix it all up. Leave on the highest heat until you hear the first kernel pop.

Once you hear a pop, shake the pan hard every couple of minutes. The popping should get more frequent, then begin to drop off. One it all starts slowing, get ready to pour the popcorn into a big bowl. There’s a fine balance to this bit- leave it too long, and the toffee coating starts to burn and taste bitter. Don’t leave it long enough, and there are too many un-popped kernels in the popcorn.

Cinder Toffee

50g salted butter
300ml water
4 teaspoons malt vinegar
3 tablespoons golden syrup
450g granulated sugar
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

Grease a large baking tin with butter (mine was 11 x 7 inches). Heat the butter, water and vinegar together in a large saucepan with a jam thermometer (the saucepan should be larger than you think necessary – remember that this recipe will froth and swell) until the butter has melted. Stir in the sugar and golden syrup over the heat until they dissolve. Stop stirring, and bring to the boil. Keep boiling without stirring until the toffee reaches the hard crack stage on your thermometer (if you don’t have a jam thermometer, a teaspoon of the molten toffee dropped into a saucer of cold water at hard crack stage will form brittle into strands and crack when you try to shape it). ***Update – it is incredibly important that your toffee really does reach hard crack stage, which is 154°C, or else it may sink after rising.*** Be careful – the mixture will be unbelievably hot, and very dangerous if there are children or pets around. Remove the toffee from the heat, and gently stir in the bicarbonate of soda.

Startling frothing will occur. Keep stirring gently until the bubbles settle down a bit, then pour the mixture into your greased tin. Wait for between ten and twenty minutes until the mixture is set up but still warm, and break the toffee into pieces. Lay these pieces out on a wire rack until the sweets are cool, then transfer to an air-tight container (or your mouth).

Butterscotch

150ml/1/4 pint of water
450g/1lb Demerara sugar
50g/2oz butter

Poor water into pan and bring to boil add sugar and butter, heat slowly stirring till sugar dissolves and butter melts, bring to boil and cover pan and boil gently for 2 mins

uncover continue to boil with out stirring for about 12 mins
(or until little of mixture dropped into cold water separates into threads)
Pour into a buttered tin.

Everton Toffee

4 tablespoons water
100g/4oz butter
300g/12oz Demerara sugar
2 level tablespoons golden syrup
1 level tablespoon black treacle
Put all ingrediants into pan, heat slowly, stirring, until butter melts and sugar dissolves.

Bring to the boil, cover pan and boil gently for 2 minutes.

Uncover, continue to boil, stirring occasionally for 10/ 15 mins (or until a little of the mixture dropped into a cup of cold water separates into hard and brittle threads.)

Poor into a buttered tin and leave until hard.