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Can You Make Toffee with Brown Sugar?

Can You Make Toffee with Brown Sugar?

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Toffee is a delicious treat that you might want to make for special occasions. If you really love the taste of it, you might even make your own regularly.

When you’re new to making it, you might not be sure what the best recipe is. Perhaps you’re wondering what type of sugar you need to make high-quality homemade toffee.

Can you make toffee with brown sugar? Or are you supposed to use something else?

Continue reading to learn more about this delicious treat and what type of sugar is best for making it.

You Can Make Toffee Using Brown Sugar

You Can Make Toffee Using Brown Sugar

Yes, you can indeed make toffee using brown sugar. In fact, brown sugar toffee is the type that many people prefer.

There are a number of different brown sugar toffee recipes that you can find online. You’ll also find such recipes in various cookbooks that you can buy at local bookstores.

The method for making brown sugar toffee is the same as any other. You’ll simply be using packed brown sugar in place of other types of sugar.

Making toffee involves caramelizing sugar alongside butter. Some recipes might also call for flour.

Can You Make Toffee with White Sugar?

Making toffee with white sugar is typical. Many of the most common recipes that you can find involve utilizing white sugar.

Therefore, you shouldn’t hesitate to make toffee with white sugar. As you might expect, white sugar toffee will taste different than brown sugar toffee.

Depending on your preferences, you might like one over the other. If you have a favorite type of toffee that you buy from a local bakery, you can always ask them whether they use white or brown sugar.

They might be willing to at least reveal that much even if they won’t give you the full recipe. You’ll then be able to go online and find a recipe that sounds good.

Can You Make Toffee with Raw Sugar?

Using raw sugar to make toffee isn’t going to work out. You simply won’t be able to caramelize the sugar properly.

When you attempt to caramelize raw sugar, you’ll find that it can’t be done normally. Granulated sugar is different because it doesn’t contain impurities.

Raw sugar has many impurities that inhibit the caramelizing process. When you want to make toffee, raw sugar isn’t going to be an option.

Instead, you should go to the store and buy granulated sugar. You can use either white sugar or brown sugar, based on your preference.

Simply ensure that you’re using an appropriate recipe. Look up either a white sugar toffee or brown sugar toffee recipe to get the best results.

What to Expect

Knowing what to expect when making toffee will get easier once you’ve made it a few times. Overall, the process is straightforward, but it’s easy to burn it if you aren’t careful.

Making toffee is something that you can get used to with experience. If you’re nervous about trying to make it for the first time, it might be beneficial to learn about some tips.

Below, you’ll learn about several tips that can make your experience much easier. It should allow you to have a good time making toffee while avoiding some common mistakes.

Always Grease the Pan

Forgetting to grease the pan before getting started might come back to haunt you. When you don’t grease the pan, it’ll be more likely to experience spillovers.

This can be messy and will make your experience far worse. The syrup will bubble up rather easily if you don’t take the right precautions.

Making the syrup stay down in the pan is simpler when it has been greased. Grease the pan using vegetable oil cooking spray.

Doing this makes it a lot tougher for the syrup to bubble up and overflow. You’ll save yourself from having to deal with a big mess by preparing properly.

Exercise Patience

Making toffee isn’t something that can be done fast. It’s a slow process that will require a bit of patience.

Don’t make the mistake of trying to rush things by increasing the heat. You’re supposed to simmer the syrup and bring it up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit over time.

If you try to use high heat to speed the process up, it’ll cause more harm than good. In fact, this is the most common reason why toffee will separate.

You could unknowingly cause the butter and sugar to separate in the pan. Instead of caramelizing everything, you’ll wind up ruining the batch of toffee.

Expect it to take approximately 20 minutes for the syrup to reach 300 degrees Fahrenheit. You aren’t meant to try to make things go faster.

Use a Candy Thermometer

Use A Candy Thermometer When Making Brown Sugar Toffee

Using a candy thermometer will make your life easier. If you don’t have a reliable way of gauging what stage the toffee is at, it’ll be too easy to burn the entire batch.

You want to avoid taking things too far. By purchasing a candy thermometer, you can keep a close eye on the temperature of the toffee.

These thermometers aren’t all that expensive. You can purchase one online or buy one from a local department store.

It will certainly be worthwhile to get one. You might even like being able to use it for other things.

Consider Using a Light-Colored Saucepan

Another good thing to think about is the type of saucepan that you’re using to make the toffee. Using a darker saucepan might make certain things tougher.

For instance, it won’t be as easy to see the color of the toffee to understand how close you are to burning it. Many people enjoy toffee that has a strong caramel flavor.

The toffee gets darker as it gets closer to that strong flavor. However, it can be tough to know when to stop when you are using a dark-colored saucepan.

Using a light-colored saucepan allows you to more easily spot where you’re at in the process. If you want to enjoy blonde toffee that isn’t so strong, you’ll know to stop when the toffee has a fairly light color.

You can keep going until everything is darker for a stronger flavor. It should be simpler to make strongly-flavored toffee without burning it if you have a reliable light-colored saucepan.

Baking Soda Helps Toffee to Be Crunchy

Not all toffee recipes call for baking soda. However, you might want to add some to the mix if you’re a fan of crunchy toffee.

When you put baking soda into the syrup mixture, it’ll react and cause things to bubble. The bubbles stay trapped in the syrup and help to give the end product the right level of crunch.

Of course, it isn’t necessary to add baking soda. You can make toffee without it, but many people prefer crunchy toffee.

If you like your toffee crunchy, don’t forget the importance of baking soda. It’ll ensure that you’re happy with your results.

Final Thoughts

You now know that toffee can be made using brown sugar. It can also be made using white sugar.

Making toffee using raw sugar isn’t possible since it contains too many impurities. It won’t caramelize properly.

When making toffee with either brown or white sugar, it’s best to follow an appropriate recipe. If you use the other tips mentioned above, you should have a great experience no matter what type you’re trying to make.

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