Troubleshooting the Chocolate on Butter Toffee

For the past 3 months I've explored, enjoyed and been successful with a butter toffee. Where Iconsistentlyhave issues is the chocolate layer shearing from the toffee during the breaking up of toffee stage.

Let's explore what's been done..

• I began like many do and let the chocolate melt on the surface of the hot toffee. This worked somewhat well but had some unpredictable outcomes. It would shear from 5% to 30% depending on batch and regardless the chocolate would bloom within the week.
• I then went to the toffee cooling method; I would pour the toffee, score it multiple times, cool it, come back to it later, wipe off any excess butter sheen (and it's been pretty minimal) then use a microwave to prepare the chocolate. This seemed to bring down my shearing to 0% to 15%. However much of the time the chocolate would bloom again within the week.
• Lastly I've gone to preparing it, scoring, cooling, wiping and then using tempered chocolate to coat the top and I get a 15% to 35% shearing.

I'm good at troubleshooting, I've got an engineering background so walking through steps andanalyzingthe situation runs in my blood but this.. this is head to wall bashing frustrating.

If you make toffee professionally what step am I missing? I have my toffee down to a rhythm, no separation, beautiful quality, flavor, color--but this lack of chocolateadhesiondrives me nuts. I'm about to just start scoring and breaking then enrobing squares but that makes the time of prep go up which I'd rather not do on most of the line I'm working on.

I feel there is a tip or trick I've not been privy to--that eludes me--driving me up a wall heheh!

updated by @andy-ciordia: 04/13/15 10:40:51PM

As a friend in the business once told me, "Welcome to toffee Hell". If you think about it, tempered chocolate releases from a smooth surface, i.e. molds. We want it to release from molds, but not from smooth toffee. I finally decided to place callets on very warm surface and not touch until about 90F. I put on a clean glove and smear. I want it out of temper. I then top with fairly fine almonds. This is to hide any bloom. I have very little if any lifting. I have heard of sprinkling with flour to absorb any oil, but I don't have an oil problem and don't want the gluten in it. I have also heard of dusting with cocoa powder to absorb any oil. Also, I use dark chocolate only on toffee-just personal preference.

As to the blooming after a few days, I had the opportunity last week of taking a class from Chef Greweling and Mark Heim of Hershey. I didn't catch the whole discussion, but it had something to do with leaving the finished product in an 86 degree room for a time and it prevented or made the bloom go away. Wish I would have taken better notes! I think Mark hangs out here on occasion. He would have a great answer for you. Mark?

Oh Ruth don't tell me that.. LoL! I was betting with my wife that anyone who used chopped/ground nuts were covering bloom.

I agree totally on your observation. This isn't a marriage made in heaven, a minutely slippery surface with a material that likes to shrink when cold, release well when tempered, and isn't thatporous.

Right now I love a 60% chocolate sea salt but it's a rather naked product so you see a bloom happen. Someone said they liked how it looked, like we did it on purpose. Heh, that gave me a giggle.

I do a white chocolate honey toffee and I have a consistent <= 1% shearing of the white chocolate but since we know its composition is so much more--buttery and the honey is just a little more tacky I can't use it in comparison.

I've been real watchful of toffees since trying to solve this, there's got to be a knack for getting some greater consistency. I have 9# of toffee to make by the weekend so I'll attempt the cocoa idea and see if anyone else has some thoughts.

You could always use a little white with the dark and swirl it. Any bloom would look like you meant it BTW I use a 61% and sprinkle with Fleur de Sel, then the nuts.

Ok, I've made about 20# since I wrote this and trialled out quite a few variants mentioned by Ruth. I found a little cocoa powder is helpful--enough to soak up whatever butter/oil wasn't able to be easily wiped off. However, too much increases sharding, so much so I was nearly infuriated with a batch. I ended up stripping it and redoing it as wafers.

Next I found probably the best method outside hand dipping and that was to ladle on your chocolate, add your inclusion, and right before its fully set, break it then. The layer touching the toffee is still unset, so it pulls a bit gooey but it will not separate at this stage.

I have mixed feeling about this method. It works, sure that's good. But it means I can't just batch process a lot and break later. It also means you can use tempered chocolate pretty safely.

Still holding out for a magic method.

What is the temperature of the Toffee before it gets enrobed?

We were making chewy toffee disks and had plenty of problems during manufacturing, and I know fromexperiencethat toffee needs to be treated in it's own way.

Can you describe the process flow, times from the manufacturing of the toffee up to the enrobing stage?

Regards, Arthur

Arthur, I kind of describe the steps in the beginning of this thread. The main two ways I deal with post-toffee creation is to either let it come down to room temp on speed racks or after scoring I'll chill it, then let return it to a rack to regain room temp.

It really depends on how fast we need the material ready that day. I've never just chilled and enrobed it, that seems counterintuitive.

Hi, I'm a new member but fully understand the frustrations of all of you. I have found that I have the least shearing when I let the toffee air dry a bit so the surface isn't as slippery.

The most shearing I ever had was when I made the toffee, scored the toffee, and dipped the pieces as soon as they were at room temp. I had someone to help me for a short period of time and couldn't wait. The chocolate slid right off a lot of pieces when I broke them into smaller pieces for packing,

I make the toffee early in the a.m. and and let the pieces air dry on sheet pans on a rack. In the afternoon I dip the pieces in tempered chocolate and lay them on a sheet tray covered with nuts. My husband or friend then drops nuts on the top of the pieces, and then I put the tray in a cooling cabinet. This way I don't get a lot of chocolate in the nuts. I know it's more time consuming to dip the pieces, but it's not as if the surface has to be perfect because of the nuts. I then break the pieces in 1/4s for packing.

I do not make toffee on a rainy or very humid day. Anne Bennett

Welcome Anne and thanks for your own insights. I never thought I could be frustrated by one thing so much. I'm nearing the point where if I want to do it with utmost consistency I need it scored, broken/cut and then just toss it on our enrober when we do those production runs.

If I ever find something that works time and time again I'll definitely share it.

Hi all! I've been reading this forum on and off for some time now, and I finally made an account so I can add my two cents. I'll add a disclaimer, though: I've only been doing chocolate professionally for a year now, and this advice goes against the very nature of chocolate.I discovered my solution on accident. I had the same problems as I see here, and sometimes worse--I once had an entire sheet of toffee lose its chocolate on the first break (and it was so nicely tempered, too). My shop, though, had no humidity control last year, and I live in the tropics. I made a batch of toffee on a particularly humid day (70RH, if I recall correctly). I had to cool the sheets directly in front of the air conditioner to get them below 25 degrees so I could apply the chocolate, and by the time they got that cool, they were a sticky mess. Still, the cost of the almonds justified taking a risk, so I coated it anyway. It was brilliant. There were a few rough spots where the chocolate seized too much, but for the most part, only the part actually touching the toffee was affected, and the rest kept a very respectable, though not perfect shine.So now, since our new AC unit dehumidifies as well, after I wipe off the excess butter, I brush each sheet with about two teaspoons of water right before I coat. I rub it around a good bit to get a nice thin layer of stickiness across the whole sheet, and coat normally. I know, water is anathema to chocolate, but it's hard to argue with results. I still cringe every time I ladle that chocolate onto a damp, sticky surface.

Wow Tim. That is so counterintuitive I have to try it. Thanks for your input and story. :D

Did you really mean below 25 degrees or is that a typo? That's below freezing. Do you coat just one side or flip your sheet over to coat the other side?

I'm just curious. My toffee seems to last longer when it's totally enrobed in chocolate.

Anne Bennett

If Tim is talking Celcius it's be about 76'F which is still rather warm for my liking it's more what I was considering his temp.

Double side coating is always something we've thought of but I've never liked the result. Maybe if you have a thick toffee then two sides is good, if you have a near paper thin toffee (ours is about 1/8th of an inch) then the toffee itself will get lost with that much chocolate. However you are right your shelf life will be extended due to the oxygen barrier that a full enrobing would do. I think we get about a month or so while exposed.

Then of course you have costs to juggle depending on where/who you are sourcing from.So many variables..

Yes, that's Celsius. A bit warm, but I like a longer crystallization time, since once it leaves my kitchen, I have little control of how it's abused.

I do coat both sides (humidity is a constant battle, and it really extends the shelf life), first side as thin as possible, the second side about double that, with crushed almonds in the second side. This is mine if you want to see, though because of feedback we've started doing the chocolate a bit thicker than this picture.

I'm curious what batch sizes you all are working in? I started at 1#, then to 3# now I'm at the max I can do by hand which is about 5.5# (two sheet pans.) I'm definitely eyeing a fire kettle for the future as I think my rotator cuff might just drop off if I do this too long hehe!

Do you all score it as well before hand? I have a pizza wheel I'll do some 4"x2" (relative) squares to aid in snapping/breaking later. I feel like that would put it at a disadvantage if I wanted to dual coat it.

Nice looking product Tim. What is that about a 1/4"?

Are you brushing both sides with water before coating?

It's odd to think that we don't want toffee/sugar products absorbing water out of the air, but a little applied doesn't expedite a softening of the product.

I do about 5.5kg of finished toffee, which is maybe a nine pound batch of actual toffee, I think... I'm home today so I don't have my recipe handy. I'm working on aluminum foil at the moment, but next week I should finally get my silpats in (shipping to Brazil is sloooooow), which will hopefully let me do twice as much (I think I can fit thirty pounds in my large pot), so I can move to doing it every other week and free up some time for truffles, which I can't keep up on. I don't score... no particular reason, I just hadn't thought of it. Maybe I will next week, but like you implied, it might be too hard to flip the sheets.

I wish I could think about a fire kettle, but the shop isn't mine, and the owner won't even get more scoops. I hope to be ready to open my own place in a year or so, depending on capital, but I'll be opening small and growing slowly, so maybe in 5 years. Heh.

I'm glad you like the look of it. I think that picture is a little under 1/4" (it's about 5mm), but the added chocolate I'm doing now probably puts it at 7mm, so a bit over 1/4", though the thickness of the toffee is the same.

Yes, brushing both sides. Honestly, it might speed up softening, but I don't know; I've never kept any past about 10 days. I suspect that it wouldn't, though, since I think the seizing chocolate binds most of that water away from the toffee.

Wow Tim, you're doing great between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

I was wondering if the chocolate sieze was preventing water absorption. Looking forward to my next batch to give that idea shot.

You're 2x what I'm up to; how do you manage to spread that much material in the time it takes for the toffee to start setting? We were heating pans but that just takes too much time/heat/effort, but to spread one whole sheet pan you get one or two spreads attempts then--well you better like what you've done haaha!

Well, it doesn't really spread at all on aluminum foil so I pour it onto the lined sheet pans and just let it sit in a 150'C oven and it self spreads and levels. That's my bottle neck now--the oven only holds the four pans. I think with the silpats I'll be able to spread better than I can on the aluminum foil. If not, I'll be stuck at my current batch size. I also have a teflon rolling pin on the way that should make things easy... I hope; kinda winging it a lot of the time.

Silpat works but I found parchment paper worked just as well. The toffee might start pulling threads off the edge of the silpats so just be aware. That eventually annoyed me enough that I went back to parchment paper. The rolling pin is an interesting thought. I used one early on during the setup phase and it didn't help as much as an offset spatula and being fast as one could be.

You've given me a lot to think about today Tim. Thank you for signing up and participating. I really appreciate it.

updated by @andy-ciordia: 09/13/15 11:09:05PM

I make about 14 pounds of finished product at a time. I take 5, 1/2 sheet pans lightly sprayed with Pam into a cold oven. I turn it to 350, and when it reaches that temp I turn off the oven. I do this while I'm melting the butter.

When the toffee is done I put the hot pans on the counter and put some toffee in each of the 5 pans. I can control the thickness because by using 5 pans there's room for the toffee with space left over.

As I said before, I score it and break the pieces when it's still warm, let it air dry for a bit. Then I have a tray covered in nuts. I dip the pieces, drop them on the tray, and let my husband sprinkles the nuts on the top.

Trying to visualize how large a pot you all are using. We use induction cooktops here to keep more heat out of the kitchen but you're creeping into the zone where you're going to need more output than those magnetic beasts allow for. I can't quite recall how large out pot is.. I think I'm using a 5Qt SS but I may be off.

We did a laser thermometer check of hot pans out of the oven. Within the first minute they've lost half their heat. Amazing how quick that happens. Inversely a cold pan absorbs half the toffee heat in about the same time. Using smaller pans (1/2 sheets) is smart, they can't be used as heat sinks so much due to the limited size.

Love the discussion, lots of interesting thoughts and perspectives on how we accomplish the task. Anne you're usage early on in this discussion of Toffee Hell has gotten a consistent laugh by my family.

I wasn't sure where to go on your website to ask a question so I'll do it now.

I have a question about making caramels. Boy was my arm tired the day I made toffee and caramel in the same day.

My recipe is a typical one, butter, cream, corn syrup, sugar, milk, sweetened condensed milk, and vanilla.

When I was talking to an expert at the Cargill chocolate company he said I should be using corn syrup solids. I didn't want to show my total ignorance, so I just wrote down the information. Does anyone use this product, and if so, how do you use it?

My supplier only can get in in 50 pound tubs which is way too much for me.

If anyone is interested Cargill Company has a wonderful three day course on how to start a chocolate business. It's two days of classroom and one day of hands on. If your an accomplished chocolatier the hands on might seem simple, but you can pick the experts brains.

Ah you can reach me at andy at thesecretchocolatier dot com if you have anything offsite you want to discuss, or PM me here if you need.

It looks like our recipes are very similar, I think our only difference might be cream instead of milk. Thinking back over my purchase lists.

As you may have noticed our batch sizes are not incredible. We usually keep things much smaller so we keep a good control over it all and it all stays fresh. Most all of our truffles and caramels are done in < 200 unit batches.

I've never heard of using corn syrup solids. My father-in-law controls all the caramels so I'll ask him next time I see him.

Hey Tim, I've tried part one of your suggestions--I let it sit in a 150'c / 302'f oven and it spread a little. I had to jiggle it to the corners to help move it around. How long do you use the oven for? I started w/ 5m.

Is yours convection or standard? Few finer points I had not thought through.

It seemed to work well enough though. Looking forward to trying the couple tsps of water brushed on then tempered chocolate. Oooh experimentation!

It's a deck oven. I warm it to 150'C/300'F and turn it off, then leave the trays for about twenty minutes or so. Sometimes the corners get a bit bubbly, but they settle down once they come out.

Ok. We have a convection oven and I left it on. Maybe not the best idea. It's amazing I can tell there is a difference in the sugar setting up. Look forward to seeing how it rests over the next day.

I spread about a tsp, maybe a little more with a brush over the cooled toffee (wiped any excess butter) until the water got a little tacky then immediately ladled on our tempered chocolate.

I let it set up about an hour and just got finished fiddling with about half of it. I'm still seeing quite a bit of sharding. Underneath the tempered chocolate it's a little soft still. How long do you let your slab rest before you break into it?

If I switch from breaking it to knifing it, cutting into it, that's working pretty well.

I'm walking away from it for the night. See if that moist-ish layer between the toffee and chocolate dries/soldifies/whatever and will try again in the morning. If you have any further input on that stage, awesome.

I am waiting on the edge of my seat here to see how it went, this is a very interesting discussion. I have not made toffee in my shop yet, but have been working on a recipe for it, but now I'm having second thoughts. There hasn't been much call for it here but I always want to try new things to keep my creative juices flowing. I can't wait for the next chapter.

ahaha. Christopher, small batches take you places. We have a tasters circle we bring in to vet our ideas. Make a few small batches, get an idea of the process and potential workload, if you like it, if more importantly customers like it, then bam-zoom. You're in trouble for creating a sensation. hehe.

Latest update on this test batch.. I had to use a knife to cut along my score lines, I was seeing more sharding than I would have liked but when cutting it I only saw a small amount of toffee/chocolate separation.

I have to try this again though. Because I was basically cooking my toffee longer in the oven I had a higher % of butter separation than I am used to. This could be creating an issue with the test if even after a good and through wiping the excess I feel it could be throwing a bit of this off. I also want to try not scoring it. Scoring can pool butter which may increase the sharding.

So positive signs but inconclusive. More experimentation!

I don't know why it's not sticking for you now... so many variables. I haven't really tried any changes at all since I hit on my solution, so I can't suggest what else to try. I can break it whenever I need to and have good results; anywhere from an hour after coating to three or four days.

You know, with all the problems you guys are having, I hate to say this. But, I've never had this issue. I've made toffee two ways. One, I scatter half the amount of chopped chocolate and nuts on a silpat. Pour the toffee over as evenly as I can without spreading. Then scatter the other half over that. Let set and break into pieces.

The second way: Pour the toffee in a thin layer on a silpat and let harden. I usually have my tempering machine working while making the toffee. I spread a thin layer of chocolate on one side, then top immediately with chopped nuts. After setting up, I flip it over and repeat. I then break into pieces. I don't usually have a lot of oil form on the top. I have occasionally brush with cocoa powder, but have found it's not necessary.
None of this helps I'm sure, I just can't think of anything that is causing such problems.

Tim, yea I have a few more thoughts to work through. I employed multiple new ideas in one go and that's never a great idea. You should only change one thing per round so you can keep better control.

Robyn, your first method works fine with me. But since we have a naked product. All I use is sea salt, I can't cover the streaking bloom that happens from an untempered product. If I use nuts then my nut allergy crowd would go nuts, hehe!That lead me to wanting to have a tempered solution. I'm amazed you've never had a separation problem with tempered chocolate. You've got a low porosity buttered surface with a slathering of a tempered chocolate which by nature releases.

Searching online nearly everyone who uses tempered chocolate has a chocolate/toffee separation issue that drives them back to an untempered idea.

It could also be the chocolate that's being used. White chocolate doesn't give me this problem at all. Tempered or not.

It's a strange and fickle beast. If anyone does not have this problem, feel very very lucky that your environment, recipe, and/or product choices have coincided to not create a problem. :D

Andy, have you tried different chocolates? If white works, maybe try a different chocolate, either brand or type?

I think you should try scoring while the toffee is still hot. This should help. If you find any pooling of the butter you can always wipe it off with a paper towel. I agree with Ruth that you might need to try a different chocolate.

Am I the only one out there that dips actual pieces and not the whole sheet? It is more time consuming but when I break these pieces into smaller pieces for bags or boxes I don't get any shearing.

Ruth, white just isn't chocolate haha. I mean it's cocoa butter with <1% solids. I expect it to behave differently. I could try some other chocolates but if I vary that's going to mess with the backbone of our operation or if I use the higher end that we use in our truffles it's liable to make my costs bend a bit out of proportion. I'll keep down this line a few more iterations before I'm done.

Anne, I score mine and to some degree that's helped as if it does break off oddly its just around the scored edges I've made. I have threatened that if I continue to fail at this that I'll end up scoring/cutting and then having the kitchen finish them on enrober days. I handle all of our costs based off a COG+L (cost of goods + labor & overhead) spreadsheet I've made and if I hand dipped each unit then broke it, the labor value exceeds percentages I like to keep on most of our products.

If only I could have made this like Robyn with a nut in it, then I could have handled this a few ways hehe. The fact that it's such a simple product (deceptively) creates more problems.

I've got a number of batches I have to crank out this week. Once I take into account some of the addendum's made with Tims observations I'd like a few more cracks at it before I throw in the towel. In the end this can be a large multivariate problem and it only takes a few variables I feel to create issues. Here I thought 6 months ago I was doing something that'd be easy. Haha!

Andy, Anything new to report?

Regarding the difference in success between white or milk vs dark. The toffee is an aqueous system and so does not want to adhere to chocolate. If you were panning chocolate on a water based center, or sugar on chocolate,you would put on an emulsifier coat, such as gum arabic, to get the two to adhere. But not easy to do on a slab of toffee as you would want to dry it. Caution adding moisture to the surface for itseffect on level of sugar crystallizing out, adding a stale note, and possibly more tooth packing.

But the main difference in this application between white/milk and dark chocolate is the amount of butter oil (AMF) in the continuous fat phase, resulting in a higher percentage of the lipids remaining an oil, less crystallized fat, this is why dark has a harder snap than milk, than white. This more liquid coating will adhere better, and it is more flexible so it won't "peel" off as easily. You can try to add a little butter oil to your current dark chocolate. A side advantage is that a little butter oil will help with fat bloom.

Thanks Mark, that makes a lot of sense and after another half dozen trials I've really come to the conclusion that whatever tricks are working for people is location based. I can't repeatedly replicate anyones suggestion. What works great one time has near failure on second attempt. The most frustrating thing I have ever encountered.

Can you elaborate on Butter oil? We've never heard of it here so I don't have much of a reference. A brand, a rule of thumb perhaps?

Andy,

Clarified butter - ie the fat part of butter when you melt it. I use this when I want to make dark chocolate 'melt in your mouth' when dipping things. 2-4% is what I use.

--
www.eztemper.com

www.thechocolatedoctor.ca

Ah thanks Kerry. We thought it might be as simple as that but web searches started confusing me. Someone called it a more refined canola oil. Clarified I can understand.

Still not quite sure a percentage to use when dealing with slabbing toffee but I'll go ahead and make some and see if Mark returns with thoughts.

updated by @andy-ciordia: 06/26/15 04:13:12PM

It's hard if your not using any nuts. Is your store nut free or do you just have a lot of people that can't eat nuts but want toffee?