As I've already mentioned, I made a New Year's resolution to dejunk my food cupboards and find uses for some of the rather unusual (to me) products that have been lurking at the back because I didn't know what to do with them. Enter the perfect candidate : a tin of black treacle. Now the only things that I could think of with the word treacle in them were treacle tart and treacle toffee. It turns out that treacle tart is actually made using Golden Syrup, also known as Light Treacle, rather than its black counterpart so that left me with Treacle Toffee, which may be called bonfire toffee, plot toffee, Tom Trot, claggum or clack, depending on where you live.
Treacle Toffee
150g black treacle
150g sugar
50g butter
In a heavy based saucepan, heat three parts black treacle and three parts sugar to one part butter.
Heat over a moderate heat, stirring every now and then, until it has all melted together.
Then stop stirring and allow to boil for a few minutes. If you have a sugar thermometer, you can get all technical and decide whether you want brittle or chewy toffee. I didn't, so I went for 5 minutes which gave a slightly brittle but still very chewy consistency.
When I looked at the black, tar-like mess in the pan, I thought this would end up in the bin ! I poured it into a baking parchment-lined tray and left it for 15 minutes to set, after which I peeled it off the paper and cut it up with scissors.
Black treacle has a very strong, slightly bitter taste that really comes through in the toffee. I didn't like it at all but the kids can't get enough of it, so it really is down to personal tastes.
There seem to be a million different recipes for making treacle toffee so if you have a better way - or if you have a great idea for what else I can do with the rest of my tin of black treacle - I'd love to hear from you in the comments !
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Mmm This looks lovely! I do like treacle, but agree it's very personal taste. Funny enough, I just ordered a sugar thermometer so I can *finally* makes some marshmallow, so I'll give this a try!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for linking up to Homemade Thursday :-)
I love treacle toffee so this is right up my street!
ReplyDeleteoooh now I have a tin of that lurking in my cupboard too. I must see what I can do with it. I don't like treacle toffee though but yours looks nice
ReplyDeleteI'll be experimenting - I still have half a tin to use up !
DeleteLove treacle, as does my daughter, so will definitely need to try out this recipe. I'm sure it will be so yummy! Mmmmmmm.....
ReplyDelete