This Christmas I made candy, a peanut butter toffee that is becoming a Nibbler kitchen favorite. It resembles butterfingers in texture, but with a much richer taste. It's elegant looking too: glassy little mahogany-colored squares covered in shiny dark chocolate. The best thing about them, though, is the dense and crumbly texture. Does anyone really like chewing on tacky-textured caramel or sticky-hard peanut brittles? I have my doubts.
The ingredients are so simple and the process so quick that one could whip these up for quick gifts within an hour.
Peanut Butter Toffee Squares
1 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup smooth peanut butter
3 T water
1 large dark chocolate bar (at least 70%)
In a saucepan on medium-high, place the water and sugar. Stir until combined and then let boil until it goes through all the sugar phases: the thread phase, ball phase and crack phase. You'll see the boiling bubbles turn into foam on top of a viscous liquid that trails, and then the foam itself will become viscous. Soon after this the sugar would color (if it were white sugar) and then you would have reached your desired phase-- the soft crack. Since you can't go on color with brown sugar, you can and should use a candy thermometer, but I prefer to use the nose for a much quicker read on its state. As soon as the smell goes from molasses to slightly burnt, you're there. If you think it might have shifted, it probably has; it's time to act immediately. Stir in the peanut butter then turn the flame off. Keep stirring until the peanut butter starts to pale to a beige color and then begins to crumble. The whole thing will darken in color slightly as the peanut butter caramelizes and then will form a solid, chalky-textured liquid mass. Pour it immediately on to a foil covered cookie sheet.
Place several layers of foil on top and then press town with a cutting board or with a towel. Let cool, but not all the way. (This should only take about ten minutes or less.) The squares should cut easily and have a glassy surface and swirled pattern on top. Then cover these squares with a thin layer of tempered chocolate. (Which means heating the chocolate to 110 degrees, stirring vigorously till shiny and cooling down to about 90 degrees. After trying different methods I prefer to temper in the microwave.)
The kitchen experiments that led me to this recipe made me think of what a genius of engineering American candy can be. Because candy is all sugar (and if it's good, usually balanced with some salt) there is no real taste, only texture. This balance of sweet/salty, texture and presentation is the science and art of candy making.
Here are what I think are the most ingenious American candy bars:
Hershey's Kisses:
Launched in 1907 in the States, these Kisses have just become available in the UK this year to the puzzlement and vexation of some Brits. A recent Guardian article describes the disappointment of discovering that "a food which boasts an impressive amount of cultural glamour has all the flavour notes of regurgitated milk." They go on to quote chocolate scholar Paul Richardson's description of them as "a piquant background flavour of something faintly sour, cheesy, or overripe, what chocolate experts call a 'barnyard' taste," as if that was a bad thing... Milk chocolate is best when it's slightly cheese-like, and even like an aged goat cheese if it's great, like the best of the Sharffen Berger bars, their Rich Milk Chocolate. Kisses are the cheap American chocolate with the most interesting flavor, having some flavor yet none of that bitter dutched chocolate aftertaste of most Hershey's bars. And of course there's the packaging, and the size, and the shape--all of which make them the perfect candy to place in someone's palm.
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
Round ruffled milk chocolate disks in black pleated paper cups, and sold in pairs, this 1923 candy bar is another form of perfect packaging. It also gets the sugar/salt balance just right. Gourmet or organic peanut butter cups taste of chocolate and peanut butter, but these little disks taste of neither, but are a too sweet and musky other taste, that seems to hit some just right spot. These are the second-best selling candy bars in America.
York Peppermint Patties
And my vote for the best candy in America is the one with the fewest ingredients: sugar, corn syrup, semi-sweet chocolate, invert sugar, egg whites, oil of peppermint. It's the simplicity that makes these delicious, and also the use of very dark chocolate (unusual in both 1940 when these were first sold and 1975, when they were launched nationally) contrasted with the white and light mint. But what makes this a genius invention is the use of egg whites, which give them that light taste and texture, smooth and firm, very unusual for this very old sweet. (Usually the mint filling is either gooey--and these days full of hydrogenated oils--or hard and crisp.)
