Frieda's Crystallized Ginger

You can get crystallized, or candied, ginger in the produce section of your local grocer. It might be in a weird location you'd never considered, but it should be available.


It's basically a package of ginger made into candy. It's delicious.


Frieda's Crystallized Ginger, $1.99/3 oz.

Toffee Bits, Take 4

Since Take 3 looked like it was working out marvelously, I figured I'd see if I could reproduce the results exactly, straight away. While Take 3 was cooling, I worked on this batch.

Toffee Bits, Take 4
a repeat of Take 3

1/2 c butter
2/3 c sugar
1-2 tbsp water
pinch kosher salt

Place sugar, butter, water and salt in a small saucepan.


Melt the butter over low heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.

From the time the saucepan hit the stovetop to the butter being almost completely melted was 6 minutes.

Gradually bring to a boil.

Simmering to boiling at 220°F occurred over 3 minutes.

Continue boiling until 300°F.


247, 263, 267,  and 280°F. And then the mixture just got stuck at 280°F for about 5 minutes while I was aghast that the butter separated from the solids. These photos were collected over 16 minutes.

Stuck at 280°F and clearly breaking, I figured it would be best to just stir like crazy.

After stirring for two minutes, the butter went into the solids a little bit and was still noticeable on the surface. Boiling seemed to completely stop.

Very slowly, the temperature reached 295 and then jumped to 304°F.

This was another 2 minutes.

Stir candy and pour evenly across a parchment lined large baking sheet.

The toffee was thick and started setting up almost immediately. I spread it out with a spatula and was surprised there wasn't more butter oozing from the candy.

Let toffee cool until hardened. Blot with coffee filters to absorb excess butter. Drop the toffee onto a parchment-lined baking sheet to break into smaller pieces.


Fold the parchment over the toffee and smash the candy into bits with a measuring glass.

The toffee looks like it went from glossy to matte in some freak way. It did. I threw it in the refrigerator while I worked on something else. When removed from the fridge a couple hours later, it looked dull but was easily smashed to bits and still tasted just fine.


Doing it exactly the same way as Take 3, I saw that my butter broke around 270, 275. For some reason, the entire mixture had stopped boiling. I kicked up the heat a tad and kept going. I had to stir it just to get appropriate temperature readings. Once at 300, er 304, I took it off the heat, and started stirring like crazy. The butter went into the sugar, just as expected. The problem with that though is that the toffee started setting up as soon as it began cooling, so I had to work FAST. I didn't work quite as fast as I should've and wound up having to try spreading the toffee with a spatula instead of tilting the pan and letting gravity do its business. Pretty was not the goal since it was going to be smashed to bits, so it didn't matter that the toffee wasn't spread evenly.

The big lesson here was not to panic, stir like crazy if the mixture breaks, and just keep on keepin' on.  This batch confirms to me that the increase in sugar, from 1/2 c to 2/3 c was certainly the way to do it. IF I do this again I might increase the sugar quantity even further, but not by much more. As it is, I have plenty of bits to make cookies with.

Cost:

• sugar: $0.15
• butter: $0.54

TOTAL: $0.69 for about 1.5 cups of bits.

Toffee Bits, Take 3

After a bunch of reading regarding why my Take 2 toffee "broke" aka why the butter and sugar separated, I didn't have any answers. Some people said to stir more, some said stir less. Some said stir constantly, some said stir only occasionally. Screw it. I say just use more sugar! If there is an excess of butter, it makes sense to me it's because there's too much butter or not enough sugar. So let's rock this shit.

Toffee Bits, Take 3
adapted from Take 2

1/2 c butter
2/3 c sugar
1-2 tbsp water
pinch kosher salt

Place sugar, butter, water and salt in a small saucepan.


Melt the butter over low heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.


The heat was set so low, this step occurred over 10 minutes.

Gradually bring to a boil.

Going from melted butter to the images shown immediately above, simmering and boiling (220°F), took about 8 minutes.

Continue boiling until 300°F.

From 243°F, 265°F, 268°F, 283°F, to 301°F took a total of 15 minutes.

Stir candy and pour evenly across a parchment lined large baking sheet.

 And just look at the butter. While there is some leaking it was a million times less than the butter that leaked from Take 2!

Let toffee cool until hardened.

Proof of hardened toffee: grab two opposing corners of the parchment and see if the candy is stiff as a brick when laid across the edges of the baking sheet. Mine was hard within 20 minutes.

Accidentally crack the toffee. Blot the toffee with coffee filters.


Drop the toffee onto a parchment-lined baking sheet to break into smaller pieces.


Fold the parchment over the toffee and smash the candy into bits with a measuring glass.



At around 290°F, I gave a little stir, just to see what was happening and I could see that the butter and toffee were separate. You can sort of tell in the last photo showing the thermometer in the pan. Once at 301°F, I removed the thermometer and then gave it a fairly vigorous stir. Noticing I was sloshing some butter out of the pan, I stopped and poured the mixture onto the parchment-line baking sheet. It looked great!

I realize now that there might be something to stirring very vigorously at the end of cooking - it's like getting the butter to go into the caramels. Consider this a eureka moment.

Either way, there seemed to be much less butter pooling this time around and I know I didn't slosh that much out while stirring. Using more sugar certainly seems to have a positive effect. I'll do it again just to be sure. Actually, I had started another batch while this one was hardening.

Cost:

• sugar: $0.15
• butter: $0.54

Total: $0.69 for 1.5 cups of toffee bits.

Toffee Bits, Take 1 and Take 2

I need some toffee bits for the next cookie recipe. Sure, I could just buy them like the recipe suggests, but my recent candy-making experiences have let me believe I can make anything I want, anything at all! Candies as ingredients for other things, like cookies, even.

Lots of toffee Googling later, I've come to the conclusion that toffee is just butter and sugar in about a ratio of 1:1. Maybe throw in some corn syrup, maybe some water, maybe some salt. Then I Googled toffee bits recipe and here we are.

The ingredients are the same as the original recipe but I rewrote the instructions to illustrate what happened for me. Pay attention to this: don't worry about time, go s l o w. I know this because I did it twice, the first time going with the flow, the second time at reduced heat with much better results.

Toffee Bits
adapted from Zestuous

1/2 c sugar
1/2 c butter
1 tbsp water
pinch kosher salt

Place sugar, butter, water and salt in a small saucepan.


Melt the sugar and butter over low heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar and gradually bring to a boil.

This boiling was achieved within 6 minutes of the photo above.

Allow the mixture to continue boiling. When nearing 300°F the solution will begin to brown.

This is in 2 and 3 additional minutes.

Throw in a candy thermometer, too late, and see that the sugar mixture has reached 314°F, and not surprisingly, doesn't look very appealing when removed from heat. Butter is clearly pooling above the potentially burnt sugar.

And in one more minute the temperature clocked in at 314°F. So the butter and sugar went from solid to burnt in a total of 10 minutes.

Set this aside and start Take 2 in a smaller, 1 quart, saucepan.

Within 15 minute of removing the saucepan from heat, the toffee part solidified (the slot is where I pulled the spatula from the saucepan) and the butter pooled. Hours later, the butter solidified and I scooped the whole thing into the trash.

Place sugar, butter, water and salt in a 1-quart saucepan.


Melt the sugar and butter over low heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar and gradually bring to a boil.

The three images were collected over a 5 minute period.

Continue boiling until 300°F is reached.

The temperature increased from 188, 263, 269, 287, to 301 over 8 minutes.

Immediately transfer the solution to a parchment-lined baking sheet and spread with spatula.


Let cool; the candy will harden.


Grasp the candy firmly by an edge and let excess butter drip off. Drop the candy sheet onto a second baking sheet lined with coffee filters, allowing the candy to shatter.


Pick up and drop the larger toffee pieces to break them into smaller pieces.


Pile the toffee between coffee filters and squash with a measuring cup to break into bits.



They taste good, just like toffee should - nice and buttery, but man, they are sticky - to my teeth and to each other. I don't want toffee bit globs in the cookies! While Take 2 was a million times better than the first, I can't help but think that the amount of butter that dripped from the toffee sheet was a lot. I mean, it was enough that I wanted to blot the additional butter with coffee filters. Certainly, remaining butter made the toffee pieces clump together.

I wonder if I cooked the mixture even slower more butter would go into the sugar solution. What's the point in using that much butter if not all of it goes in? Plus, the toffee on Zestuous look more matte than glossy, so that tells me something I did wasn't quite right.

The first batch, Take 1, went from solids to burnt in a total of 10 minutes. The second batch, Take 2, went from solids to spread-on-parchment paper in 18 minutes. Slower is definitely key.

Cost:

• sugar: $0.10
• butter: $0.54

Total: $0.64 for about 1.5 cups of toffee bits. And, of course, it was another $0.64 that went into the garbage. I hate that.