Homemade Butter Toffee
Butter toffee has to be one of the best candies out there – growing up I had a mild addiction to Macintosh toffee – if I had the choice between a candy bar and one of the Mack tartan box I’d jump at the hard and chewy later option every time. Corporate consolidation saw the Canadian version I had in my childhood disappear a while ago, and while a modern version came back out after a few years it just doesn’t measure up in my view. Fortunately homemade butter toffee has to be one of the easiest candies to produce in your own kitchen. Simple ingredients, quick to produce and no pulling required.
So if you’ve missed that original tartan candy or never experienced it – give this recipe a try.
- 1 pound butter
- 2 2/3 cups sugar
- 1/3 cup water
- 1/4 cup corn syrup
- coarse salt for sprinkling on top if desired
- Combine all the ingredients (save for the salt) in a deep pot and apply gentle heat until the butter is melted. Then mix and turn up to medium heat.
- If you have a deep enough pot for your batch size (this recipe scales nicely) you won't need to do much stirring - but if you are maxing out your pot you'll need to stir to keep things from boiling over.
- You'll observe the boiling vigor will moderate and the mixture will start to take on a caramel colour. At this point you'll want to start periodically dipping a metal spoon into the mix and cooling small samples to assess the consistency of the mix when cooled. In this way you can choose where to arrest the change as the mix to go from soft to chewy to hard. I usually like to hit somewhere in the chewy hard range.

- When you've hit the desired consistency pour out the mass into prepared containers. I really like using silicon baking pans or sheets for this task, but buttered pans will also do the trick. I tend to look to achieve about 1/4" thickness in my finished product.
- Cool and cut or break into pieces as appropriate for the hardness you've achieved. Try not to eat it all in one go.




