Troubleshooting the Chocolate on Butter Toffee

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 20:40:51