Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Silver Bear Toffee

Toffee is a strange thing. It’s like caramel gone too long on the burner, but it becomes its own special delight. In the United States, toffee is generally hard caramel: a mixture of sugar and butter. It’s boiled slowly to “hard ball” stage and then cooled, usually as flat pieces. What’s so wonderful about it is the way it cracks. It’s completely irregular. It flakes, it crumbles and it fractures. It’s buttery and sweet and often has a nice salty twang to it that cuts through the stickiness. (In the UK they also have soft toffees, which confuses the heck out of me, until I start eating them and then I get distracted. Mmm, toffee.)

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I got these full-sized samples directly from Brian at Silver Bear Toffee in Colorado. The first indication of their decadence is that the label says “refrigerate,” now that’s fresh toffee!

The ingredients are pretty compelling too: chocolate, almonds, butter, sugar and corn syrup. Each package was a little white box with planks of broken up toffee. The toffee was then covered in chocolate on top and sprinkled with more almonds. The dark chocolate one was my favorite as the smoky and smooth chocolate matched the sweet and salty toffee perfectly. The toffee was so buttery though that sometimes my chocolate fell off the slab. No matter. Toffee is casual; toffee is jeans and a tee.

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While I may have said I preferred the dark chocolate one, the milk chocolate one disappeared first (it could have been that toffee snitching elves were visiting my kitchen). The toffee crumbles wonderfully on the teeth and becomes a smooth and buttery experience on the tongue. There are lots of nuts in both versions but not in huge pieces, which I prefer (otherwise it’d be nut brittle).

When I eat commercial toffee bar, like a Heath bar, my usual custom is to eat the chocolate off first and then eat the toffee slab by itself. I have no desire to do that with this stuff, I want to eat the whole thing: the chocolate, toffee and nuts all at once.

The webstore isn’t open yet (I was hoping it would be in time for Valentine’s) but you can still order by phone:

Silver Bear Toffee
303-886-3892
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Toffee is $15 a pound and

$8.50

$8.00 by the half pound. Mine came boxed well with a cold-pack to keep it from melting (not really an issue in the winter).

Name: Silver Bear Toffee (Milk & Dark)
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Silver Bear Toffee
Place Purchased: manufacturer's (full size!) samples
Price: $8.00
Size: 8 ounces
Calories per ounce: 130
Categories: Chocolate, Toffee, Nuts, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:01 pm Tracker Pixel for Entry    

Comments
  1. Those look good, but too expensive for my tastes.

    Comment by El on 2/01/06 at 3:59 pm #
  2. So would the stuff in a Butterfinger be a kind of toffee?

    Comment by Scott on 2/02/06 at 8:28 am #
  3. Yum, these are mouth-watering and just by the look of them I’d say 10 all the way. I am such a Toffee and Brittle fan and I’d love to see a Cashew Brittle or Pistachio Brittle review….though I don’t even know if there are commercial candy makers of those nuts(peanut seems to have won the brittle category). I suppose I should just make my own!

    Comment by Bethany Firem on 8/16/07 at 10:54 am #
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