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BRITISH SWEETS

From classic treacle toffee to trendy salted caramel, these sticky confections are beloved bysweet toothed foodies of all ages. Jenny Linford meets the chefs and producers keeping

our toffee traditions alive

CRAZY FOR CARAMEL

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The world of confectionery contains both thelatest ingenious novelties and enduringclassics, much-loved for generations. Fallingfirmly in the latter category are toffees andcaramels, old favourites which continue toappeal. Created fundamentally by caramelising

sugar, toffee and caramel, both belong to the sameconfectionery family, with ingredients such as butter ormilk and flavourings added to create different texturesand flavours. “We love toffees because we were calmedwith them as children,” laughs baker Dan Lepard, whorecently appeared as a judge on the Australianincarnation of The Great British Bake Off, “if life wasbad, we’d have a toffee!”

“People have always wanted something sweet to eat– it's the ultimate human craving,” observes packagingexpert Robert Opie at London’s Museum of Brands. Inlate Victorian times, he explains, toffee “was a poorman’s sweet, whereas chocolate was the rich man’streat.” A visit to the museum, tucked away in a NottingHill mews, reveals numerous colourful examples of howtoffees have been packaged since the 19th century.“They were offered in tins, partly to keep the qualitybut also to lift the status, making them competitivewith chocolate boxes. There’s a huge variety in thedesigns on the tins. Some show cows in a meadow,because, of course, milk was often an ingredient, whileothers show 20th century figures, such as MickeyMouse. Assortments, like Roses and Quality Street,which are still popular today, were a way of making thechocolate cheaper by adding a lot of toffee.”

Making History One renowned maker of distinctly upmarket toffee,however, is The Toffee Shop in Penrith, Cumbria,

whose discreetly elegant, simple white boxes of toffeeor fudge can be found in the best delicatessens andfood halls in the UK. The company's confections areeven sold at Buckingham Palace and Highgrove. TheToffee Shop was set up in Penrith about 95 years agoby a Mrs Furness, explains Neil Bousted, the store’sthird and present owner, who himself has been in thebusiness 35 years.

“Her claim to fame was that the Duke of York wasstationed at Catterick and he used to ride over just forher toffee. The recipes were hers and they’ve beenpassed down through the shop’s owners. We produceour toffee and fudge in those big, old-fashioned brasspreserving pans and it’s made in exactly the same wayas it always has been, no machinery whatsoever.” Just afew simple ingredients – “good butter, milk from a localsupplier and British beet sugar” – are transformed intoa select range of delicious sweets.

The toffee is available simply either as butter ortreacle, with the latter especially popular around GuyFawkes Night. Both are rich and flavourful andsatisfyingly slow to eat, in the best toffee tradition. Adistinctive touch is that all the toffees are wrapped andbroken by hand, so you get random sizes. The sweetshave built up such a following that much of the shop’scustom comes from people travelling within the UK whostop off en-route – “we’re only two minutes from themotorway” – to get their toffee fix. Neil sees toffeecontinuing to appeal across the generations. “Themajority of young people who come into our shop havebeen weaned on our toffee by their parents!”

Another long-established toffee producer, althoughworking on a larger scale, is Walkers Nonsuch, based inLongton, Stoke-on-Trent. As managing director IanWalker explained proudly, Walkers was founded by hisgrandfather in 1922 and is a family-owned, independent

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company, with Ian himself joining the company at theage of 19. Based in what was formerly a boiled sweetsfactory, into which Walkers moved in 1947, the companyproduces a huge range of toffee in various forms. “50g or100g bars of toffee, twist-wrapped toffees, break-uptrays of toffee – we make all varieties and flavours. Wesell to supermarkets and to independent shops. In fact,nearly half the business is export; we supply to 25-40countries. North America is a good market, as is theMiddle East.”

For Ian, the family business’ emphasis on quality iskey to its success. “We always use full-cream milk,whereas a lot of people use skimmed. That makes a bigdifference. And we use brown sugar. We’re known forour treacle toffee. We make to a quality not to a price.People can undercut us on price with ease, but we maketo a standard which we keep to.” Ian Walker still getspleasure from eating his own company’s sweets; “I thinkstraightforward toffee is my favourite. It’s thecreaminess and the smoothness, that old-fashionedtoffee flavour.”

Sweet & SaltyIn addition to traditional toffee producers, the high endworld of British artisan chocolate has seen the rise andrise of caramel, especially salted, as a popularingredient. Talented British chocolatier Paul A. Young isnoted for his salted caramel, which has won numerousawards including Gold in 2012’s prestigious InternationalChocolate Awards. “Nowadays, salted caramel is in every

supermarket and every chocolate shop and is entirelymainstream,” he muses. “But when I started making ittwelve years ago it wasn’t very popular at all, though itdid catch the creative imagination of chocolatiers. It’s allabout balance – the salt makes the caramel less sweetand challenging to eat, so you can manage more of it!”

Paul makes his caramel with brown sugar and stilluses the same recipe he came up with all those yearsago. “It doesn’t contain glucose syrup, which people useas a preservative, because I don’t need my chocolates tohave a long shelf-life. I think my salted caramel has areally buttery, caramelly taste, is soft and melty andwell-balanced.” In his award-winning salted caramels,Paul pairs it with Madagascan chocolate. “It works as thechocolate is fruity and not too sweet and has enoughstrength to stand up to the caramel withoutoverpowering it.”

When it comes to making your own caramel at home,baker Dan Lepard is heartening; “it’s very easy to make.”The secret, however, is “be brave! When you put thewhite sugar in the saucepan either on its own or with alittle water, you need to boil it and go through thedifferent stages. The first stage looks like a kind ofbroken glass, quite pale, and that’s not it. You need it todarken. If you don’t add too much water to the sugar,then it doesn’t have to take a long time to make either.For 100g sugar, I’d recommend 25ml of water, bring thatto the boil over a high heat and within 4-5 minutes youshould get caramel. It’s not difficult to do. If you want asauce, you simply add your cream at that point.”

For Lepard, once you’ve mastered the knack, thenyou have access to a very flexible ingredient. “You canmake sauces out of it, you can make soft caramel, youcan make crunchy toffee. Just lately, I’ve been enjoyingmaking a really clear toffee, stirring some nuts throughit, leaving it to set on a tray, chopping it up and turningit into praline. You can add this praline to cake mixesand brownies, sprinkle it on desserts or layer it throughice cream – gorgeous!”

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The majority of young people who come into our shop have been weaned on ourtoffee by their parents!

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