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Caramel Toffee Brittle Fudge and Fondant

Caramel, Toffee, Brittle, Fudge and Fondant covers the cooked-sugar candies of the Candy Making hub that depend on dairy, nuts or controlled crystallization: chewy caramels, butterscotch, English toffee, nut brittle and honeycomb, pralines, fudge, Scottish tablet, poured fondant and cream centres. For the temperatures and the crystallization science, see Sugar Stages and the Science of Candy.

Caramels (chewy)

A caramel is sugar, glucose syrup, dairy fat and milk protein cooked to the firm-ball range. The milk proteins brown by the Maillard reaction, which is where most of the flavour comes from, and they give the chew.

Formula (by weight)

• 300 g sugar
• 200 g glucose (corn) syrup
• 300 g heavy cream (or 200 g cream + 200 g sweetened condensed milk for a milkier, softer caramel)
• 60–100 g butter
• 3–5 g salt; vanilla

Method

1. Combine everything except vanilla in a large heavy pot (it foams).
2. Stir constantly over medium heat. Dairy candies must be stirred or the milk solids scorch on the bottom.
3. Cook to the texture you want:

** 116–118 °C (240–245 °F): soft, sauce-like set.

** 118–121 °C (245–250 °F): classic chewy caramel.

** 123–127 °C (253–260 °F): firm, chewy, holds shape in heat.

1. Off the heat, stir in vanilla. Pour into a lined frame (8 mm–1 cm thick).
2. Cool for 4+ hours or overnight. Cut with a buttered knife or a guitar cutter and wrap each piece in wax paper or cellophane.

• Salted caramel: finish with flaky salt on top, or 1–2% salt in the batch.
• Test small: drop a little into cold water and squeeze, or chill a spoonful on a plate for 2 minutes. If it is too soft, cook a degree or two higher; if too hard, add a splash of cream and re-cook to a lower temperature.

Caramel (cooked sugar) for sauces and coatings

• Dry caramel: sugar alone, heated and swirled until it melts and browns (about 160–180 °C).
• Wet caramel: sugar with a little water (about 1 part water to 4 parts sugar), which dissolves first and then browns more evenly and controllably.
• Stop the cooking by adding warm cream (it boils up violently, so stand back) or by dipping the pot base in cold water.
• Used for crème caramel, nougatine, croquembouche, spun-sugar work and caramel sauce.

Butterscotch

Brown sugar plus butter (often with some corn syrup and cream), cooked to soft crack, 132–143 °C (270–290 °F). It sets hard but brittle-chewy, between caramel and toffee. Butterscotch sauce is the same flavour cooked much less.

English toffee

• About equal weights of butter and sugar (e.g. 225 g butter, 225 g sugar), plus 1–2 tbsp water, a little salt, and sometimes corn syrup.
• Melt, stir, and cook to hard crack, about 149–154 °C (300–310 °F) (some prefer 146 °C, 295 °F, for a lighter colour), stirring constantly.
• Pour onto a lined sheet, spread, and top with tempered chocolate and chopped toasted almonds while warm (or after it sets). Break into pieces when cool.
• If the butter separates (an oil slick on top): lower the heat, stir vigorously, and add a tablespoon of hot water. Separation comes from heating too fast, temperature shock, or butter with high water content. A little lecithin or corn syrup in the formula helps prevent it.

Brittle

Peanut (or any nut) brittle

• 200 g sugar, 100 g corn syrup, 60 g water, 150–200 g raw or roasted peanuts, 15 g butter, ½ tsp salt, 1 tsp (about 5 g) baking soda, vanilla.

1. Cook the sugar, corn syrup and water to about 120 °C. Add the nuts (raw nuts roast in the syrup).
2. Continue to hard crack, about 149–154 °C, stirring, until golden.
3. Off the heat, stir in the butter and vanilla, then the baking soda. It foams: CO₂ from the bicarbonate lightens the brittle and makes it tender and easy to bite rather than glass-hard.
4. Pour at once onto a buttered sheet or silicone mat and pull thin with buttered forks. Break when cool.

• Nougatine (French) is caramelized sugar plus sliced almonds, rolled thin and cut while warm. Chikki (India) is jaggery plus peanuts or sesame, and pasteli (Greece) is honey plus sesame. See Regional Candies of the World.

Honeycomb (sponge candy, hokey pokey, seafoam)

• 200 g sugar, 70 g corn syrup or golden syrup, 30 g water (or honey in part), then 8–10 g baking soda (a lot more than brittle).

1. Cook to about 149 °C (300 °F). Off the heat, whisk the baking soda in fast (5 seconds) and pour without spreading. Spreading knocks out the bubbles.
2. Leave it undisturbed until fully cool, then break. Coat it in chocolate to keep humidity out; uncoated, it goes sticky in hours.

• Korean dalgona / ppopgi is a single-serving version: melted sugar plus a pinch of baking soda, pressed flat and stamped.

Pralines (New Orleans style)

• Brown and white sugar, cream or evaporated milk, butter and pecans, cooked to soft ball, about 112–116 °C (234–240 °F).
• Off the heat, stir until the mixture just starts to thicken and lose its gloss (the sugar is beginning to crystallize), then spoon quickly onto parchment. They set creamy-crystalline. Stir too long and they set in the pot; too little and they stay sticky.
• (The French praliné is a different thing: caramelized nuts ground into a paste. See Chocolate Tempering Ganache Truffles and Bonbons.)

Fudge

Fudge is the classic controlled crystallization candy: it should be thousands of microscopic sugar crystals in a creamy syrup.

Traditional chocolate fudge

• 400 g sugar, 240 mL whole milk or cream, 60 g unsweetened chocolate or 30 g cocoa, 30 g corn syrup, 30 g butter, a pinch of salt, vanilla.

1. Stir over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Wash down the pot walls.
2. Cook, stirring gently only as needed to prevent scorching, to soft ball, 112–116 °C (234–240 °F). The low end gives softer fudge, the high end firmer.
3. Off the heat, add the butter on top without stirring. Leave the thermometer in.
4. Cool undisturbed to about 43–50 °C (110–120 °F). This takes 30–60 minutes. Don't move the pot.
5. Add vanilla and beat steadily with a wooden spoon (or a stand mixer on low) for 5–15 minutes, until the fudge loses its gloss and starts to thicken and hold its shape.
6. Spread it into a buttered pan at once. Cut when set.

• Why the cooling matters: at 43–50 °C the syrup is strongly supersaturated, so beating triggers a burst of nucleation and gives many tiny crystals: smooth fudge. Beating hot gives few, large crystals: grainy fudge.
• Rescuing grainy fudge: put it back in the pot with a few tablespoons of milk or water, dissolve it completely, and cook and cool again.

"Foolproof" fudge

Recipes using sweetened condensed milk, marshmallow creme or chocolate chips rely on interfering agents (milk proteins, glucose, invert sugar, fat) to stop large crystals forming, so beating isn't critical. They make a softer, less crystalline fudge.

Scottish tablet

Sugar, butter and sweetened condensed milk (or milk), cooked a little higher than fudge (about 116–118 °C) and beaten longer, until it is grainy-thick. It sets firm and crumbly-crunchy, deliberately coarser than fudge.

Fondant

Poured (cream) fondant

The white, creamy centre of chocolate creams, the glaze on petit fours, and the base of buttermints and peppermint patties.

• 500 g sugar, 150 g water, 50–75 g glucose syrup (or ⅛ tsp cream of tartar).

1. Dissolve, wash down the walls, and cook without stirring to 114–118 °C (238–245 °F).
2. Pour onto a wet marble slab or into a stand-mixer bowl. Cool undisturbed to about 43–45 °C.
3. Work it with a scraper or spatula (or a mixer paddle). It turns from clear syrup to opaque white and suddenly "seizes" into a firm, crumbly mass.
4. Knead it until smooth. Wrap and ripen for 24 hours at room temperature (it softens and becomes creamier as the crystals settle).
5. To use: warm gently to about 37–40 °C (no hotter, or it loses its sheen and turns coarse), thin with a little syrup, flavour and colour, then pour or pipe.

Cream centres and cordial cherries

• Flavour the fondant (peppermint, maple, vanilla, fruit), roll it into balls, and enrobe in tempered chocolate.
• Cordial cherries: wrap a cherry in fondant containing a little invertase enzyme (about 0.1–0.3%), then seal it in chocolate. Over 1–3 weeks the enzyme splits the sucrose into invert sugar and the solid fondant liquefies into syrup inside the shell. A neat piece of applied enzymology.

Rolled fondant

The cake-covering fondant is a different product: powdered sugar plus gelatin or glucose plus glycerin plus fat, kneaded, with no cooking to soft ball.

Maple candy

Pure maple syrup boiled to about 112–113 °C (234–235 °F) (about 11–13 °C above the boiling point of water), cooled to about 70 °C, then stirred until creamy and moulded. It is the same principle as fudge. Sugar on snow (maple taffy) is syrup boiled to about 112–116 °C and poured onto clean packed snow, where it sets chewy.

See also

• Candy Making
• Sugar Stages and the Science of Candy
• Marshmallow Nougat Taffy and Aerated Candy
• Chocolate Tempering Ganache Truffles and Bonbons
• Regional Candies of the World
• Infused Confections Even Dosing in Gummies Chocolate and Hard Candy

Sources

• Greweling, P. P. Chocolates and Confections, 2nd ed. CIA/Wiley, 2013. Caramels, toffee, brittle, fondant, fudge, invertase cordials.
• Hartel, R. W., von Elbe, J. H. and Hofberger, R. Confectionery Science and Technology. Springer, 2018. Caramel (Maillard, milk proteins), fudge and fondant crystallization.
• McGee, H. On Food and Cooking, rev. ed., 2004. Chapter 12.
• Exploratorium, "The Science of Candy": soft-ball, soft-crack and hard-crack stages. Exploratorium
• Hartel, R. W. and Hartel, A. K. Candy Bites: The Science of Sweets. Springer/Copernicus, 2014.
• Cornell University Maple Program, maple confections guidance (cooking maple candy and cream to degrees above the boiling point of water).

Coverage

Chewy caramels (formula, stirring, texture by temperature), dry and wet caramel for sauces, butterscotch, English toffee and how to fix separated butter, nut brittle and the role of baking soda, nougatine, chikki and pasteli, honeycomb and dalgona, New Orleans pralines, traditional fudge with the cool-then-beat crystallization method and its rescue, "foolproof" fudge, Scottish tablet, poured fondant (cooking, working, ripening, re-warming), cream centres and invertase cordial cherries, rolled fondant, and maple candy and sugar on snow.

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