How to Make Almond Toffee
April 9, 2009 by Dunkin · 4 Comments
A toffee recipe, at first glance, looks deceptively simple. What could be easier…combine butter, sugar, and little water, cook it to a set temperature or certain color…poured out to cool, cover with chocolate and behold another perfect batch of toffee! If you have made toffee at home then you know that there are a host of things that can go wrong, many times for no apparent reason. I have personally produced hundreds of thousands of pounds of toffee…I am a professional toffee maker. Almond Toffee
I’m going to give you a few Toffee Maker’s secrets to help you make that perfect batch of toffee, consistently, batch after batch after batch . . .and not just ordinary toffee, but World-Class Gourmet Almond Toffee!
Toffee Maker’s Secret #1: Use an accurate candy thermometer. Use the thermometer as a guide or as a roadmap. It’ll give you an idea when you have arrived. As you gain experience, the color of the batch will also tell you when the toffee is ready.
Toffee Maker’s Secret #2: For consistency from batch to batch weigh each ingredient with a food scale and use only the finest ingredients available.
Toffee Maker’s Secret #3: Follow the cooking procedure exactly. When making toffee the procedure and timing is just as important as the ratio of ingredients. What makes toffee. . .”Toffee”. . .is the procedure.Cooking The Batch.It’s important that the butter is brought to the boiling point. Add the water and again bring to the boiling point. Boiling the butter and water will dissolve the sugar crystals very quickly. This will keep the batch from recrystallizing during the cooking process. Almond Toffee Recipes
Toffee Maker’s Secret #4: Very important! Wash down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush and water. Any undissolve sugar crystals will cause the batch to recrystallize. If the batch recrystallizes it will be very grainy and will also separate. I personally have never been able to save a batch of toffee if this happens. You would need to throw the batch out and start over.Let’s continue…Some critical temperatures to be aware of: At about 250°F the batch would recrystallize if the heat source you’re using is not high enough to dissolve the sugar crystals as they form. From 250 to 280°F the toffee syrup will appear thick and heavy and will give the impression that the batch is partially recrystallized. But if your stove is hot enough the tendency to recrystallize would be eliminated.
Toffee Maker’s Secret #5: Every single Toffee Maker has experienced this problem. The butter and sugar will separate during the cooking process. To solve this problem all we need to do is add an emulsifier at the beginning of the cooking procedure. Lecithin is used for this purpose. Lecithin allows the butterfat to mix with the moisture in the batch. Lecithin is a by-product in the production of soybean flour and oil. The lecithin is purified and non-allergenic for people with soybean allergies. Soy lecithin can be found in health food stores, some major supermarkets and stores that sell candy making supplies and ingredients.
Toffee Maker’s Secret #6: Depending on your elevation, adjust your temperatures by subtracting 1°F for every 500 ft above sea level. (For example: at sea level water boils at 212°F, but where I live water boils at around 201°F). Now back to cooking the toffee…As the batch thickens it will not cling to the side of the pan. As soon as the batch shows some signs of scorching, at about 290°, the heat should be turned down. From this point on the batch will gradually become thinner and will again cling to the sigh of the pan. Cooking beyond the temperature of between 280° to 315°F will cause the batch to scorch and will invert too much sugar. If this happens the toffee will be too brittle and will not develop a soft grain as it ages.
Toffee Maker’s Secret #7: Toffee should be aged for a least one week. This aging process gives the toffee a chance to develop an ideal grain and maximum butter flavor. Let’s continue. . .At the end of the cooking process, 302 to 306°F, the batch will be free from grain. At this point, add a small amount of Baker’s Special Sugar to start the graining process to give the batch a fine soft grain texture.
Toffee Maker’s Secret #8: Toffee should always be kept refrigerated or frozen and tightly sealed. NEVER, EVER, store toffee at room temperature or out in the open air!
Toffee Maker’s Secret #9: Take the flavor of your toffee to the next level, pre-roast your almonds. Use whole, raw, shelled, Non-Pareil almonds. Speed almonds on a cookie sheet and place in a preheated oven at 350°F for about 15 to 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.
Toffee Maker’s Secret #10: Use only cane sugar. The above procedure can be applied to or adapted for any toffee recipe and in many cases can be applied to any of your candy making adventures…not just toffee making. Columbine Almond Toffee
Website design accessibility
February 22, 2009 by Dunkin · 6 Comments
1. Does My Website Have To Be Accessible in 2008?
You do have a responsibility at some level, whether or not you are the designer or the commissioner of the website, to ensure your website design does not discriminate against disabled visitors to your site.
2. So what happens if your website design is not accessible?
Unsurprisingly, you leave yourself open to criticism, bad press and and more seriously legal action if your site is not accessible.
3. What level of compliance should your website design meet?
No case has been brought to court in the United Kingdom to date, so there is no case law guidance. In any event, case law can only provide broad guidance – what websites have to do may vary from site to site. What is important, however, is the outcome: the DDA requires that you make what it refers to as “reasonable adjustments”, to your services to ensure that a person with a disability can access that service. This means making changes to websites – which offer 24 hour service, and a variety of features not available via, for example, a telephone service – so that disabled people can use them.
4. Web Accessibility Opinion
Basically, you need to make sure your site is built to W3C standards for good website design. That means valid html and valid css. It means passing Priority 1 W3C WCAG (Google it!) at least. It means well formed website code (i.e. without errors) and simple and correct use of technologies. Actually – this is fairly simple to do for an experienced web designer – do not accept that you need to pay more for accessible web design – it should come as standard, part of good practice web design. You could go one step further and ask “vision impaired” testers to test drive the site. Finally, you need to listen to your web site visitors. If someone contacts you about the inaccessibility of your web site – then fix it!
There’s a business case and moral obligation to make your site as accessible as you can. There are over 8 Million people registered as having a disability in the UK, and a lot of them use the net – do you really want to ignore them? Prosecutions have been successful in Australia and the US – it will happen in the UK, just not any time soon – so don’t worry too much about prosecution – and don’t listen to the snake oil salesman who want your hard earned cash for total website redevelopment!
