Cheater Pants Salted Toffee

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I have epic cooking failures.  I’ve exploded a pan of fudge, started a wooden spoon on fire, burned a finger almost to the bone, destroyed pots and covered my forearms in oven scars.

The most recent catastrophe involves 6 pounds of butter.  No matter what I did the toffee would NOT cooperate.  I burned one pan and had 2 more with sand-like texture.  Even though I’ve made perfect toffee before, nothing worked!  It was Christmas and I was hot, cranky, and out of butter.  Awful.

After a month sulking, I found a solution.  A family friend makes toffee by cheating with crackers (seriously!).  As I clearly need a no-fail recipe, I gave it a try.  It’s great and no one noticed the crackers.  While I’ll try regular toffee again someday, for now I’m sticking with the cheater pants version.

Cheater Pants Salted Toffee

Makes 30 pieces

Ingredients

• 1 box butter crackers (I used Keebler Club Crackers)
• 3 T loose brown sugar
• 1 C butter
• 1 C packed dark brown sugar
• 1 T vanilla
• 1 C sliced almonds, toasted
• 1 C semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 C milk chocolate chips
• 1-2 t Murray River Sea Salt or large grain sea salt

Directions

Heat oven to 400.  Line a baking pan with foil.  I used a quarter sheet, slightly smaller than a 9×13 pan.  A 9×13 pan would also work fine.  Spray foil with nonstick spray.  Sprinkle loose brown sugar.

Line pan with butter crackers, fitting in as many as possible.  Edges should touch but not overlap.  I used around 30, slightly more or less will be ok.

Melt butter in sauce pan over medium heat.  Add brown sugar.  Mixture will boil, do not turn higher than medium.  Boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat, add vanilla.  Pour hot sugar mixture over crackers, spread evenly with spatula.  Put pan in oven.  Bake 5-6 minutes.  Use a timer and watch closely to ensure sugar doesn’t burn.  It will get slightly darker and bubble.

Remove from heat, sprinkle chocolate chips.  They will melt in about 2 minutes.  Spread to cover top of toffee.  Sprinkle on toasted, sliced almonds and sea salt.  Go easy on the salt especially if you haven’t used it before.  A little goes a long way.  Feel free to mix up the toppings, pecans would be tasty too.

Cool pan completely.  I put mine in the fridge overnight.

Break into pieces and serve.  My toffee broke along the cracker lines.  Amazing toffee + even squares = perfect recipe!

Recipe adapted from www.allrecipes.com, “Popularity Cookies” by Alice